tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6498739347909985243Thu, 08 Dec 2016 14:00:25 +0000book reviewsflinkshorrorThe BoSSfantasynewsdigressionsvideo gamesthe end of the world againdebutsbooks receivedfilm reviewThe Scotsman Abroadguest postshort storiesexcusesYAzombiesComing Attractionsghost storiesdark fantasyon bloggingtrilogiesawardsholidaysvideo game reviewanthologiesurban fantasycomicsLondonStephen Kingtor.comdystopiaadaptationstime travelChina MievilleQuoth the Scotsmanmurder mysteriesquotescomic book reviewintroductionsmoviescover artfaithmagicGuy Gavriel Kayalternate historybloggers you should be followingfairytalesfree readinggiveawayson writingsci-fithe best booksTop of the Scotssciencespace explorationStrange Horizonsnovellason readingunreliable narratorsCover Identitycoming of agee-bookshistorical fictionlove storiespress releasestrailerstranslationsvampirescrime fictionendingsfunny fictionliterary fictionperiod piecesscience fictionJoe AbercrombieLovecraftMark Charan NewtonPaul KearneyThe Hunger GamesTrick or TreatYou Tell Megiveawayinterviewspoliticssuperheroestelevisionthe best gamesthe weirdthrillersAdam RobertsAliensGeorge R. R. MartinNeil GaimanNights of VilljamurVictorianaalien invasionclassicsdragonsfilm previewon genrereviewsAIBatmanBrandon SandersonEric BrownJeff VandermeerK. J. ParkerShort Fiction SpotlightThe Walking DeadTiganaannouncementshaunted housesmetafictionparallel universespublishingsteampunktechthe best movieswartimeBioshockCity of RuinDaniel AbrahamJames SmytheOpinionated SpeculationsStatus UpdateSuzanne Collinsdetectivesenvironmentalfree stuffmysteriesspace operasurvivalvideosA Song of Ice and FireAdam NevillBSFABargain BooksBest Served ColdExcerpt EmporiumJoe HillRobert Jackson BennettScotlandSherlock HolmesSilent HillSouth AfricaSpeculative Cinema in 2010TV ReviewThe Left Hand of GodThe MachtTom PollockTop of the Scots 2012Twilightbook announcementsconspiracyduologiesepic fantasyevil aliensguest postsmagical realismnot newsparanormal romancepossessionshared worldsA Death in the FamilyAlison LittlewoodAsk Me AnythingBoneshakerCastmongerCatherynne M. ValenteChristmasDaniel PolanskyHalfway Through 2010James S. A. CoreyJasper FfordeMockingjayPaul HoffmanPeter V. BrettThe Book of the DeadThe Dark Knight RisesThe PassageThe Skyscraper ThroneThe Speculative SpotlightTome of the Undergatesbloggingcollectionscomedygodsinternational fictionmemesmummiesmusicpodcast reviewsocial mediasurvival horrortie-inswerewolvesA Game of ThronesAlif the UnseenBatman BeginsCaitlin R. KiernanCatching FireCherie PriestChinaChristopher PriestClive BarkerComing Back to Comic BooksDaryl GregoryE3Elspeth CooperG. Willow WilsonGenevieve ValentineLavie TidharLetters From AmericaN. K. JemisinPatrick NessPortalRussiaSam SykesSarah PinboroughShort Fiction CornerSongs of the EarthSteven EriksonThe City and The CityThe City's SonThe Dark KnightThe ExpanseThe First LawThe HeroesThe Legends of the Red SunThe ScarThe Way of KingsTom FletcherTop of the Scots 2010Top of the Scots 2011Under HeavenYoung Adultanthropomorphised animalsapocalyptic fictionbody horrorbook previewchosen onescrimecynical marketing ployseBookseducationespionagefeaturesfirst contactfound fictionkings and tingslow fantasynon-fictionpseudonymspuzzle gamessatirescientific romanceswords and sorcerytravelA Dance With DragonsAlexey PehovBioshock InfiniteBlake CharltonBritish Genre Fiction FocusChris BeckettChris NolanClaire NorthDave HutchinsonDavid MitchellFinchFringeGeorge A. RomeroGoogleGraham JoyceHaloHot Toddy 2010Iain BanksJack the RipperJurassic LondonJustin CroninKim Stanley RobinsonKrakenLegends of the Red SunM. D. LachlanMira GrantNick HarkawayParisRiver of StarsS. L. GreySFF MasterworksSeason's GreetingsShadow ProwlerSpellwrightSpliceStephen BaxterTed ChiangThe Dark TowerThe Elder Scrolls IV: OblivionThe Elder Scrolls V: SkyrimThe Lifecycle of Software ObjectsThe Malazan Book of the FallenThe Monday MiscellanyThe ThingTim PowersTransformersUnder the Domeactionanimebestsellerscancellationsdisabilityfrom the commentsgods and monstersgrimdarklistsmystery fictionon gamingon publishingpasticheprequelsquestsreading habitsrobotssequelitissupersoldiersteachingwarwitches2312A Cold SeasonAlienAliette de BodardAmazonAmnesia: The Dark DescentApartment 16Apocalypse Now NowAtonementB. CatlingBenjanun SriduangkaewBrian StaveleyBuffy the Vampire SlayerCarlos Ruiz ZafonCeline KiernanCharlie HumanChronicles of the Unhewn ThroneCixin LiuClifford BealCloud AtlasCormac McCarthyDC ComicsDark EdenDark LifeDavid TowseyDays of the DeadDead SpaceDoctor SleepDream LondonEdinburgh International Book FestivalFablesFenrirFirst ImpressionsForge of DarknessGail Z. MartinGene WolfeGollanczGuillermo del ToroHaruki MurakamiHeart-Shaped BoxHellraiserHornsI Am Number FourJ. J. AbramsJ. P. SmytheJack VanceJared ShurinJo WaltonJonathan L. HowardJonathan OliverKaaron WarrenKat FallsKazuo IshiguroLaird BarronLev GrossmanMaria Dahvana HeadleyMark Charon NewtonMarsMass EffectMayhemMechanique: A Tale of the Circus TresaultiMichel FaberMind MeldMr MercedesMr ShiversNed BeaumanNever Let Me GoPerdido Street StationPierce BrownPittacus LorePlaystation 4Red RisingRobert McCammonSAWSF SignalSarah WatersScale-BrightSeamus CooperShutter IslandSkyeSmash HitsSmugglivusSouthern ReachSpeculative Fiction 2012Stephanie MeyerSteve Rasnic TemStoriesStrange ChemistryStudio GhibliSubterranean MagazineThe AssassiniThe Australia TrilogyThe Book SmugglersThe Crane WifeThe ExplorerThe Girls at the Kingfisher ClubThe Glass RepublicThe Inheritance TrilogyThe IslandersThe Last DragonslayerThe MagiciansThe Quantum ThiefThe Reapers Are The AngelsThe RitualThe RoadThe Stormlight ArchiveThe Straight Razor CureThe Unquiet HouseThe VorrhThe Wheel of TimeThe Wild HuntThe Windup GirlTim LebbonTony BallantyneTop of the Scots 2013TronTron: LegacyTrue BloodTy FranckUn Lun DunVincent ChongWolfsangelYour Brother's Bloodaward-winnerscosmic horrorcrowdfundingdeathdollsdrowned worldsfairiesfound footagegeneration shipshalloweenhistorical fantasyidentitylanguagemilitary fantasymountaineeringmythologymythsnew weirdnintendonoirpiracyportalsracerecommendationsselkiessequelssexshort filmssmall pressstandalonesthe moon11.22.6320th Century GhostsA Dark MatterA. J. SmithAbaddon's GateAbout the AuthorAdam ChristopherAfterpartyAl SarrantonioAlan CampbellAlan MooreAlastair ReynoldsAlden BellAlex BellAll ClearAll Your Base Are Belong to UsAltered VisionsAmbergrisAmnesia: A Machine for PigsAmong OthersAngelmakerAnna CaltabianoAnthony HorowitzArthur C. ClarkeArthur Conan DoyleAvatarBecky ChambersBen AaronovitchBest of BritishBlack FeathersBlackoutBlood KinBlue and GoldBoxer BeetleBrian WoodCassandra R. ClarkeCharlaine HarrisCharles StrossChiew-Siah TeiCity of BladesClockwork CenturyConnie WillisCoralineCubeDan SimmonsDanilov QuintetDante's InfernoDead IslandDead Rising 2Dead Space: MartyrDeadly CuriositiesDeathlessDiana Wynne JonesDimiterDrakenfeldDreadnoughtEgyptEmbassytownEnchanted GlassEnd of the RoadEnginemanEurope in AutumnF. R. TallisFelix J. PalmaFevre DreamFinal FantasyFractured EuropeFrank DarabontFull Dark No StarsFuturamaGardens of the MoonGareth L. PowellGeoffrey GudgionGideon's AngelGleamGuy DelisleH. G. WellsHal DuncanHalf LifeHalo: ReachHalo: The Fall of ReachHannu RajaniemiHeavy RainHelen OyeyemiHis Dark MaterialsHollywoodHouse of LeavesHouse of Small ShadowsIan McEwanIce ForgedInceptionIron CouncilJames CameronJapanJasper KentJay PoseyJeff LemireJoanna BriscoeJohn Ajvide LindqvistJohn Carter CashJohn ScalziJohn ShirleyJon Courtenay GrimwoodJonathan StrahanJoseph D'LaceyJoss WhedonJules VerneJulianna BaggottKaren LordKate AtkinsonKatya's WorldKen LiuKen MacleodKim NewmanKim SwiftKing RatLand of the DeadLast DaysLauren BeukesLetters to EditorsLex Trent Versus The GodsLexiconLife After LifeLisa TuttleLocke and KeyLord of the RingsLostLow TownLuke ScullLupus RexMargaret AtwoodMargo LanaganMartin ScorseseMarvel ComicsMax BarryMichael KorytaMichelle PaverMoon Over SohoMore Than ThisMr Penumbra's 24 Hour BookstoreMurderNatasha CarthewNazisNeal AsherNew Model ArmyNi No KuniNicholas RoyleNick MamatasNight Shade BooksNorthlandersOrson Scott CardOur Lady of the StreetsPaolo BacigalupiPaul CornellPaul McAuleyPeter StraubPhilip K. DickPortal 2Project NimPrometheusPureQuantum ConundrumQuick BookRPGsRaising Stony MayhallRamsey CampbellRebecca LeveneRed Dead RedemptionReign of AshRetribution FallsRevengeRichard MorganRick YanceyRidley ScottRivers of LondonRobert JordanRobin SloanSarah LotzSavagesSaxon's BaneScott WesterfeldSea HeartsSea of GhostsSebastien de CastellShades of GreyShort Story CornerShow and TellSimon IngsSimon MordenSix Feet UnderSmiler's FairSolarisSome Kind of Fairy TaleSpartacusSpartacus: Blood and SandSpartacus: Gods of the ArenaSpeculative Fiction 2013SpellboundStar TrekStar WarsStephen FryStephen GregorySteven SpielbergTad WilliamsTales of the Ketty JayTerrainThe 5th WaveThe Angel's GameThe Ascendant Kingdoms SagaThe Assassin's CurseThe Best of All Possible WorldsThe Black GuardThe Bone ClocksThe Book of the New SunThe Booker PrizeThe Broken EarthThe Company ManThe CraziesThe CroningThe CrowThe Demon CycleThe Devil's NebulaThe Dirty Streets of HeavenThe EchoThe Emperor's BladesThe Empty ThroneThe ExorcistThe Factory TrilogyThe Fallen BladeThe First Fifteen Lives of Harry AugustThe FollyThe Gone-Away WorldThe Gravedigger ChroniclesThe GreatcoatsThe Grim CompanyThe HobbitThe Hollow GodsThe Holy MachineThe Invention of Hugo CabretThe Iron JackalThe Kharkanas SagaThe Last Four ThingsThe Legend of ZeldaThe Little StrangerThe Lovely BonesThe Lowest HeavenThe MallThe Mall of CthulhuThe MatrixThe Mouse Deer KingdomThe New 52The Poison ThroneThe PropositionThe PunisherThe RecollectionThe Russalka ChroniclesThe Sarantine MosaicThe Serene InvasionThe Seventh Miss HatfieldThe ShiningThe Silent LandThe Speculative ScotswomanThe Ten ThousandThe ThreeThe Three-Body ProblemThe TroupeThe Underwater WelderThe Waking That KillsThe Walkin'The Year of the LadybirdThe ZoneThose AboveThose BelowThreeTigermanTitanicTom HoltTouchedTraitor's BladeTwelveTwenty Trillion Leagues Under the SeaUltimaUnder the SkinVikingsVincenzo NataliWalking the TreeWarren EllisWeird SpaceWho Goes There?William Peter BlattyWolvesXbox OneYellow Blue Tibiaalien abductionany excuse to mention Mievilleartarthouseaudiobooksaugmented realitybargainsbeerbook reviewsclasscyberpunkdeals with devilsdream sequencesdrugseventsfandomgendergetting metagraphic novelsgreener grasshellish horrorsimmortalityimpassioned pleasinterviewlibrariesmagic schoolmicrosoftmonkey businessmonsters among usneedlessly obscure references to third-rate Batman charactersnew releasesnorse godsoppressionoptimistic science fictionphilosophyprehistorical fictionprisonsratingsremakesrepresentationreview indexroad storiesserial killerssleepthe afterlifethe meaning of lifethe uncannytimetorture pornunbookingunexpected journeysvigilantes11-11-1112223D3D Dot Game HeroesA Borrowed ManA City DreamingA Closed and Common OrbitA Cold SilenceA Different KingdomA Dirge for Prester JohnA Flood of FlamesA Game of ThonesA Lonely Place to DieA Love Like BloodA Red Sun Also RisesA Single ShotA Small Price to Pay for BirdsongA Song for ArbonneA Tale of Two SistersA Thousand Perfect ThingsARAbaratAcceptanceAck-Ack MacaqueAct of FaithAdam McOmberAdam RobotsAdam-Troy CastroAdmitting DefeatAdrift of the Sea of RainsAfterworldsAirAjax Penumbra 1969Al RobertsonAlabasterAlabaster: Boxcar TalesAlabaster: WolvesAlan GarnerAlan SpenceAlan WakeAlcatrazAli ShawAliasAlice SeboldAlice in WonderlandAlice: Madness ReturnsAlien 3Alien: IsolationAlien: The ArchiveAll SarrantonioAmericaAmerican McGeeAmong ThievesAmy McCullochAnachronismAncillary JusticeAnd the Ass Saw the AngelAndrew TaylorAndy WeirAngel of DeathAngry RobotAnn FeatherstoneAnn VandermeerAnna SmaillAnne HoltAnnihilationAnno DraculaAnother EarthApril Fool's DayArkham AsylumArkham CityArkham OriginsArmadaAssassin's CreedAssassin's Creed: RevelationsAstraAudrey NiffeneggerAuroraAuthorityAutumnBabayagaBack to the FutureBalfour and MeriwetherBarricadeBas-LagBathing the LionBats of the RepublicBattlestar GalacticaBatwatchBayonettaBefore I Go To SleepBel Dame ApocryphaBenjamin PercyBill WillinghamBioshock: RaptureBlack DawnBlack LightBlack MoonBlack SwanBlackbirdsBlade RunnerBlockade BillyBlogger bloody BloggerBlogging in the Year We Made ContactBlood OrangesBlood's PrideBloodsounder's ArcBob FingermanBookishBooks to Die ForBoy Snow BirdBradford MorrowBrayan's GoldBreakfast With The BorgiasBrendan HalpinBrent WeeksBrian EvensonBrian JacquesBrian K. EvensonBroken SwordBuddhismBuffyBuffy the Vampire Slayer: Season EightBuriedBy Light AloneBêteC. Robert CargillCaliban's WarCall of Duty: Black OpsCapcomCaptain America: The First AvengerCarlos Ruiz ZafónCarrieCarrie RyanCase ZeroCastle in the SkyCat Out Of HellCat ValenteCentral StationChannel BlueCharlie FletcherCharlie HardieCharlie HustonChildren of Earth and SkyChiliad: A MeditationChina MiévilleChoose Your Own AdventureChris ButlerChris RobersonChris WoodingChristopher BurnsChristopher GoldenChuck PalahniukChuck WendigCibola BurnCity of Saints and MadmenCity of StairsClaire FullerClick-Clack the RattlebagClimbersCloverfieldCol BuchananColorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of PilgrimageConanConrad WilliamsCorvusCory DoctorowCowboys and AliensCrashing HeavenCrimson SkiesCrooked Little VeinCrossedCrysis 2CyperDBC PierreDaft PunkDances With WolvesDaniel O'MalleyDante AlighieriDark Made DawnDark MatterDark Souls 2Dark VoidDarkly Dreaming DexterDarren AronofskyDarren ShanDaughter of Smoke and BoneDave McKeanDavid BryherDavid CronenbergDavid FincherDavid GrannDavid HairDavid J. KowalskiDavid LoganDavid LynchDavid MoodyDavid RamirezDavid WingroveDawn of the DeadDay FourDaybreakersDead RisingDead Space 2Dead WaterDeath's DisciplesDeath's EndDefendersDen PatrickDescentDeus ExDeus Ex: Human RevolutionDevilDevil May CryDexterDial HDiana GabaldonDiary of the DeadDifferent KingdomsDishonoredDistrict 9Dog SoldiersDog Walk of the DeadDollhouseDon DeLilloDonnie DarkoDoug DorstDouglas HulickDown StationDown the Mysterly RiverDraculaDragon ApocalypseDream ArchipelagoDream ParisDuane SwierczynskiDuncan JonesDungeons and DragonsE. J. SwiftEAEchoEcho CityEdgar Allen PoeEdward CoxElantrisElidorElizabeth BearEllen DatlowEmily St. John MandelEmma DonoghueEmpire StateEnd of WatchEnder's GameEngineering InfinityEnid BlytonEnslaved: Odyssey to the WestEpitaphsEquations of LifeEric NylundErnest ClineEscape PodEssie FoxEternal SkyEuropeEurope at MidnightEurope in WinterEvie ManieriExit KingdomEzekiel BooneFaithful PlaceFall of GiantsFallout 3Fallout: New VegasFar NorthFarlanderFarscapeFeedFelix GilmanFerngully: The Last RainforestFinders KeepersFlowerFrankensteinFrederik PohlFriday the 13thFugue For A Darkening IslandFun and GamesGardens of the SunGardner DozoisGarrison KeillorGarth EnnisGears of WarGenre for JapanGhost Trick: Phantom DetectiveGillian Murray KendallGladiatorGlamour In GlassGlowGod of WarGod of War IIIGod's WarGolden SonGoodreadsGordon FerrisGothamGraeme's Fantasy Book ReviewGraham BowleyGrand Theft AutoGravityGreat North RoadGreen LanternGreg BearGuardians of the PhoenixH. R. GigerHalf Sick of ShadowsHalo: Combat EvolvedHalting StateHammer HorrorHandling the UndeadHannaHannu Hannu RajaniemiHard Case CrimeHarold GoldbergHarper VoyagerHarrison SquaredHarry HarrisonHarry PotterHaterHaunted LegendsHayao MiyazakiHeads Up!Hearts in AtlantisHeavenly SwordHelene WeckerHer Husband's HandsHexHide Me Among the GravesHigh RiseHitlerHive MonkeyHonor Among ThievesHot or NotHoward JacobsonHowl's Moving CastleHub MagazineHugoI Am AliveI Am ProvidenceI Saw The DevilIQ84Iain M. BanksIan Cameron EsslemontIan MacDonaldIan McDonaldIan SalesImmersionIn ConclusionIn Great WatersIn TributeIndependence DayIndieBoundInkInland EmpireInsanely Twisted Shadow PlanetInsidiousInsomniac GamesInto the GreyInvisibleIrregularityIslamIvo StourtonJJ. G. BallardJ. K. RowlingJ. R. R. TolkienJ. Robert KingJRPGsJack CampbellJack GlassJack KetchumJames ForresterJames MaxeyJames O'BarrJames RobinsonJames WanJan SiegelJane AustenJane GoldmanJason AaronJason ArnoppJay KristoffJay MartelJean-Pierre JeunetJeanette WintersonJee-woon KimJeff LindsayJeff SalyardsJesse BullingtonJim HensonJimmy's EndJo Fletcher BooksJoan D. VingeJoanne M. HarrisJoey Hi-FiJohannes CabalJohannes Cabal the NecromancerJohn ConnollyJohn HillcoatJohn Hornor JacobsJohn VaillantJohn W. CampbellJon WallaceJonathan AycliffeJonathan CarrollJonathan GreenJoylandJulia's EyesJulian MayJustina RobsonKameron HurleyKaraKat HowardKathleen TierneyKatya's WarKay KenyonKen FollettKenneth CalhounKevin SmithKick-AssKij JohnsonKill BaxterKings of EternityKings of MorningKit WhitfieldL. A. NoireL.A. NoireLady Blue ShanghaiLady of the ShadesLagoonLaini TaylorLara Croft and the Guardian of LightLauren DeStefanoLeft 4 DeadLegionLemony SnicketLet Maps To OthersLet the Right One InLevel-5LeviathanLeviathan WakesLewis CarrollLife of PiLightbornLightbringerLiliana BodocLimboLimited EditionLimitlessLiquorLittle BrotherLittle Hut of Leaping FishesLittle Sister DeathLittle StarLondon FallingLong Dark DuskLord of EmperorsLord of SlaughterLord of the FliesLoss of SeparationLost SoulsLowtownLucky McKeeLudmilla PetrushevskayaLunaLuna: New MoonLynne TrussM. J. CareyM. John HarrisonM. L. N. HanoverM. Night ShyamalanM. SuddainMLN HanoverMacaque AttackMage's BloodMagic: An Anthology of the Esoteric and ArcaneMaltaMamaMan PlusMarcel ThereouxMarcus DunstanMarcus SedgwickMarinaMark HodderMark MillarMartiansMartyn WaitesMary Robinette KowalMatt HaigMatthew F. JonesMatthew VaugnMax PayneMedusa's WebMementoMemorialMen in BlackMetrozoneMichael BayMichael KortyaMichael SheaMicmacsMidnight RiotMike CareyMile 81Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar ChildrenMistbornMistificationMoneyballMonkey WarsMonsieur Linh and His ChildMoonMore Fool MeMoriartyMorning StarMount To-be-readMoxylandMuppetsMur LaffertyN.Naomi FoyleNathan DrakeNeal StephensonNebula Awards Showcase 2014Neil BurgerNeil JordanNeil MarshallNemesis GamesNeuromancerNew CrobuzonNew YorkNi No Kuni: Wrath of the White WitchNick CaveNick CutterNight BoatNight ChroniclesNight WatchNightflyersNightjar PressNimrod AntalNina AllanNine Inch NailsNinja TheoryNnedi OkoraforNo Harm Can Come to a Good ManNo Way DownNormalOn Stranger TidesOndineOne Hour PhotoOpethOrbit BooksOryx and CrakeOsamaOur Endless Numbered DaysOutcastsOutlandOutlanderOutlastPS4Pan's LabyrinthPandemoniumPaperhouseParaNormanParanormal Activity 3ParasiteParasitologyPariahPasi Ilmari JääskeläinenPath of NeedlesPatrick MeltonPatrick RothfussPaul AusterPaul KanePaul WitcoverPaulo BacigalupiPeter F. HamiltonPeter JacksonPeter WattsPhilippe ClaudelPhoenix Wright: Ace AttorneyPiranha 3DPirates of the CaribbeanPixarPlanesrunnerPlanet of the ApesPodcastlePoint HorrorPontypoolPoppy Z. BritePredatorsPrettiesPrimerPrince of PersiaProximaPseudopodPsychonautsPump 6 and Other StoriesPyongyang: A Journey in North KoreaQ.U.B.E.QuarantineQueen of KingsR. B. RussellR. Scott BakkerRIPRachel PollackRadianceRailseaRange of GhostsRansom RiggsRaven GirlRavenstoneRayman OriginsReach for InfinityRed CountryRed MoonRed Sonja: BlueRed StateRed White and BlueRedshirtsRedwalleRegicideResident EvilResident Evil 6Resident Evil AfterlifeResistance 3RetributionRevengerRevivalReviverRich EllisRichard DawkinsRichard KellyRichard KurtiRiding the UnicornRoads to MoscowRobert E. HowardRobert KirkmanRobert RodriguezRobopocalypseRochita Loenen-RuizRoger EbertRoguesRolf BauerdickRomeRon MooreRoomRule 34S.S. J. WatsonSF GatewaySacred TreasonSaga's ChildrenSailing to SarantiumSalman RushdieSam TaylorSara GruenSarah HallSatoshi KonScar NightScott DerricksonScott K. AndrewsScott LynchScourge of the BetrayerScrying the FantasticSerene InvasionSergei LukvanyenkoSergey and Marina DyachenkoSeth DickinsonSeth PatrickSeven WondersSevenevesShades of Milk and HoneyShadow and BetrayalShadows of the New SunShamanShenzhen: A Travelogue from ChinaSherlock Holmes and the Servants of HellShip BreakerShip of TheseusSilent Hill: DownpourSilent Hill: Revelation 3DSimon RumleySimon SylvesterSinisterSkylineSlade HouseSleeping GiantsSleeplessSlightsSlow BulletsSnowblindSo Cold the RiverSolarSomething Coming ThroughSongs of the Dying EarthSookie StackhouseSource CodeSouthern GothicSouthland TalesSpeak EasySpecial Needs in Strange WorldsSpecialsSpellbreakerStarburst MagazineStardustStarmanStarship TroopersStation ElevenSteam MachineSteelheartSteig LarssonStephen CollinsStephen King's N.Stephen RomanoStill LifeStormdancerSubterranean PressSubterranean Tales of Dark Fantasy 2Sucker PunchSuper 8Survival of the DeadSusan HillSven the ReturnedSwan SwongSweet ToothSword of the NorthSylvain NeuvelSymbiontTake ShelterTales of ValdurTana FrenchTe Left Hand of GodTender MorselsTerence BlackerTerriersTerry MooreTerry PratchettTestamentThe AbominableThe AbyssThe AdjacentThe AlchemistThe Amaranthine SpectrumThe American BoyThe Anatomy of GhostsThe Anomaly QuartetThe Archer Who Shot Down SunsThe Art of HuntingThe Bazaar of Bad DreamsThe Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us AllThe Black DawnThe Black PrismThe Black Sun's DaughterThe Blair Witch ProjectThe BodyThe Book of All HoursThe Book of Strange New ThingsThe Book of TransformationsThe BookmanThe BorgiasThe Borrowers ArriettyThe BoxThe Boy with the Porcelain BladeThe Brides of Rollrock IslandThe British Fiction FocusThe Broken KingdomsThe Buried GiantThe Burma ChroniclesThe CapeThe Causal AngelThe ChecquyThe Chemical GardenThe Child EaterThe ChimesThe Chronicles of SialaThe City of MirrorsThe ClawThe Company of the DeadThe Cross + The HammerThe Crow: Death and RebirthThe CultureThe Cypress HouseThe Dagger and the CoinThe Dark CrystalThe Dark ForestThe Darkest Part of the WoodsThe Darkness That Comes BeforeThe Days of the DeerThe Death HouseThe Death of Bunny MunroThe Deepgate CodexThe DepartureThe DescentThe Descent Part IIThe Desert SpearThe Devil You KnowThe Devil's ApprenticeThe Divine CitiesThe Divine ComedyThe Diviner's TaleThe Dragon's PathThe Drowning GirlThe Elder ScrollsThe Emperor of All ThingsThe Empire of TimeThe Encyclopedia of Science FictionThe End of the SentenceThe Entire and the RoseThe Erebus SequenceThe Eve AppealThe ExecutionessThe ExtraThe Eye of ZoltarThe Fear TreeThe Fifth SeasonThe Fionavar TapestryThe FiremanThe FiveThe Flight of the RavensThe Folding KnifeThe Folly of the WorldThe Forest of Hands and TeethThe Forever WatchThe Gaia ChroniclesThe Galaxy GameThe Garden of DarknessThe Gentlemen BastardsThe Ghost in the Electric Blue SuitThe Gigantic Beard That Was EvilThe Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairlyland in a Ship of Her Own MakingThe Girl With All the GiftsThe Girl With The Dragon TattooThe Girl With The Glass FeetThe Glorious AngelsThe Goddess and the ThiefThe Golem and the DjinniThe Good the Bad and the SmugThe Gospel of LokiThe GradualThe Great Bazaar and Other StoriesThe Grinding HouseThe Guiding Nose of Ulfänt BanderōzThe Guns of IvreaThe Habitation of the BlessedThe HammerThe Hanging ShedThe Happier DeadThe HatchingThe Heart Goes LastThe Heart of the WorldThe Heretic LandThe Hidden PeopleThe House of Shattered WingsThe House of SilkThe Human CentipedeThe HumansThe Humble eBook BundleThe Hundred Thousand KingdomsThe Hunter's KindThe IncorruptiblesThe Infinite SeaThe Infinity ProjectThe Just CityThe Kind FolkThe Kingdom of GodsThe Kingkiller ChroniclesThe Kings of EternityThe Language of DyingThe Last Days of Jack SparksThe Last Mortal BondThe LeapingThe Legend of Zelda: Skyward SwordThe Lies of Locke LamoraThe Light That Gets LostThe Lions of Al-RassanThe Living DeadThe Long Earth by Terry PratchettThe Long PriceThe Long WarThe Long Way HomeThe Long Way to a Small Angry PlanetThe Lord of the RingsThe Lost City of ZThe Lost FleetThe Lost Fleet: DauntlessThe Lost GateThe MachineThe Madonna on the MoonThe Magic of RealityThe Magician KingThe Man Who RainedThe Man in the High CastleThe Many-Coloured LandThe Map of TimeThe Map of the SkyThe MartianThe Moon of GomrathThe MoontideThe Name of the WindThe New GirlThe Newgate JigThe Oathbreaker's ShadowThe Obelisk GateThe Ocean at the End of the LaneThe Outsorcerer's ApprenticeThe OversightThe Owl ServiceThe Owner of the WorldsThe Painted ManThe Pillars of the EarthThe Prince of MistThe Prince of NothingThe Promise of the ChildThe Providence of FireThe QuarryThe Quiet WarThe Rabbit Back Literature SocietyThe RaceThe Red TreeThe RedemptionThe Relic GuildThe Republic of TreesThe Rest of Us Just Live HereThe Restoration GameThe RevolutionsThe RookThe Saga of the BorderlandsThe Saga of the ExilesThe Scarlet GospelsThe Science of AvatarThe Secrets of Drearcliff Grange SchoolThe Severed StreetsThe ShadeThe Shadow of the WindThe ShieldThe Silence of GhostsThe Silent HouseThe Silver BoughThe Sleep RoomThe Social NetworkThe Song of the Body CartographerThe Song of the QuarkbeastThe Spectral LinkThe StandThe Stone GodsThe StormwatcherThe Strange LibraryThe Stress of Her RegardThe Sudden Appearance of HopeThe TechnicianThe Teleportation AccidentThe TerrorThe Themis FilesThe Thing ItselfThe Thing on the ShoreThe Thousand Autumns of Jacob de ZoetThe Three Body ProblemThe TigerThe Traitor Baru CormorantThe Transfigured LadyThe TroopThe TunnelThe TwelveThe Twilight ZoneThe Two of SwordsThe TwyningThe UnitThe Vampire DiariesThe Violent CenturyThe VisitorsThe VoicesThe War of the FlowersThe WardThe WarrenThe Wasp FactoryThe Way of ShadowsThe Way to BabylonThe Weirdstone of BrisingamenThe White ForestThe White Luck WarriorThe Wicker ManThe Wicker TreeThe Wind Through The KeyholeThe Wise Man's FearThe Wizard of OzThe Wolf BorderThe WomanThe Woman in BlackThe X-MenThe Year of the FloodTheatre of the GodsThere Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbour's BabyThin AirThirteen Years LaterThis Census-TakerThis River AwakensThis Savage SongThomas LigottiThomas Olde HeuveltThomas Was AloneThorThose Who Wish Me DeadThree Days to NeverThree Moments of an ExplosionThundercatsTim MaughanTimeBombTobias BuckellToby BarlowTom HarperTom TonerTomb RaiderTop of the Scots 2014TouchTowers of MidnightTrent ReznorTricia SullivanTrilliumTubing the YouTwin PeaksTwo Worlds and In BetweenTwo Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight NightsUgliesUnchartedUncharted 2: Among ThievesUncharted 3: Drake's DeceptionUndead NightmareUndergroundUpstream ColorV. E. SchwabValhalla RisingVellumVideodromeWakening the CrowWar HorseWar of the WorldsWarhammerWarhammer 40kWarhammer 40k: Space MarineWater for ElephantsWay Down DarkWayfarersWeWe Need to TalkWeirdWest of EdenWhat Dreams May ComeWhite is for WitchingWild ThingsWill McIntoshWillam GibsonWilliam GayWinter DamageWitherWomen's Prize for Fantastic FictionWords of RadianceWorld Book NightXbox 360Xbox NextYann MartelYevgeny ZamyatinYoko OgawaYsabelZachary Thomas DodsonZack SnyderZero KZodiac StationZoo Cityaddictionadventureairshipsallegoryangelsbiasblog toursboard gamesbook trailersbuying habitscartoonscatscelebrationscollaborationscolonialismcontroversiesconventionscosmic sociologycultsdaddy issuesdid not finishdiscriminationdisgressionsdocumentariesdownsideeternal lifeevil vehiclesexoplanetsfaeriesfamilyfamily feudsfan fictionfanservicefoodfootballfranchise fatiguefreedomfuturismgames as artgenetic engineeringgrand larcenygrievous injuriesheavenly creaturesholy warif wishes were horses I'd have lots of horses but still no stableilluminated novelsinternational cinemainvisible womenkickstarterkids todaylife after deathlife everlastinglocked roomslost novelsmash-upsmathematicsmemoirsmemorymiddle volume syndromemilestonesmoney money moneymusic reviewnaturenon-violencenostalgiaof mermaids and menoh please noon an islandon booksellingon reviewingopen doorsoriginalityparadoxphotographypicture bookspiratespodcastsposthumanpreviewsprison shipsprivacyproblem solvingprohibitionpsychologypuppiesratsre-introductionsrebellionsretrospectivesrevivalsrevolutionsromancesalutationssea monstersseeing dead peopleserial storiesshenaniganssibling rivalrysocial experimentssonyspace piratesspecial effectsspidersstatisticssurrealismsurvivalist horrorswashbucklingtaxidermytelekinesistemplarsterrorismthanksgivingthe Age of Reasonthe Tarotthe artsthe love of my life Aidan Moherthe origin of the speciesthe postmodernthe uncanny valleythe world's first midqueltomb raidingunnatural disastersutopiautter rubbishvoyagerwastelandsweird westernswhodunnitworld cinemawormswritingThe Speculative ScotsmanReviews, news and interviews about all things weird and wonderful, for all creatures great and small.http://scotspec.blogspot.com/noreply@blogger.com (Niall Alexander)Blogger1228125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6498739347909985243.post-5173726082823762451Thu, 08 Dec 2016 14:00:00 +00002016-12-08T14:00:25.681+00:00book reviewfuturismhorrorlocked roomsmysteriesNormalsftechWarren EllisBook Review | Normal by Warren Ellis<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ca4us57X_9c/WA3zt3NJN2I/AAAAAAAAPQk/UL9HzW_lIP0qoGPlE-r1Rr1Xfw4GukfLwCLcB/s1600/normal.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ca4us57X_9c/WA3zt3NJN2I/AAAAAAAAPQk/UL9HzW_lIP0qoGPlE-r1Rr1Xfw4GukfLwCLcB/s400/normal.jpg" width="266" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>There are two types of people who think professionally about the future: foresight strategists are civil futurists who think about geoengineering and smart cities and ways to evade Our Coming Doom; strategic forecasters are spook futurists, who think about geopolitical upheaval and drone warfare and ways to prepare clients for Our Coming Doom. The former are paid by nonprofits and charities, the latter by global security groups and corporate think tanks.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>For both types, if you're good at it, and you spend your days and nights doing it, then it's something you can't do for long. Depression sets in. Mental illness festers. And if the abyss gaze takes hold there's only one place to recover: Normal Head, in the wilds of Oregon, within the secure perimeter of an experimental forest.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>When Adam Dearden, a foresight strategist, arrives at Normal Head, he is desperate to unplug and be immersed in sylvan silence. But then a patient goes missing from his locked bedroom, leaving nothing but a pile of insects in his wake. A staff investigation ensues; surveillance becomes total. As the mystery of the disappeared man unravels in Warren Ellis's Normal, Adam uncovers a conspiracy that calls into question the core principles of how and why we think about the future--and the past, and thenow.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>***</i></div><div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />For all our&nbsp;whistle-blowing and brainstorming, for all our back-slapping and activist hacking, for all the awareness we've raised and for all the progress we've made—for all that, it's not going well, the world.<br /><br />That, at least, is what Adam Dearden believes, and, as a futurist who's resided on both sides of the aisle, he should know. Knowing what he knows, though, doesn't mean he can do a damn thing about it. That frustration recently reached fever-pitch for him when, whilst working in Windhoek, he saw something he shouldn't have seen; something that sent him over the proverbial edge.<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">He was a futurist. [He] gazed into the abyss for a living. Do it long enough, and the abyss would gaze back into you. If the abyss did that for long enough, the people who paid you for your eyes would send you to Normal Head. The place was paid for by foundations and multinationals alike, together. Most of their human probes needed it, one way or another, in the end. His first thought, in fact, that night in Windhoek, was that he was going to end up in Normal if he couldn't keep his shit together. (p.16)</blockquote>He couldn't, of course.<br /><br />Built "on the bones of a town founded by a madman whose last recorded words were about its terrible lights," (p.12) Normal Head Research Station is a sanctuary of sorts for screwed-up spooks and strategists and such. There, anything that could coax out their crazy is contained: mobile phones are a no-no, social media is strictly prohibited, and you can only access the internet if you've demonstrated yourself relatively sensible.<br /><br />Which leaves... what? Well, there are a few DVD box-sets to watch, a bundle of board games to play, I dare say, and acres of ancient forest to get lost in. Your only real responsibility, when you've been sent to Normal Head, is to get better—if only so you can go back to gazing into that infinite abyss. And Adam Dearden <i>does </i>want to get better. Alas, within hours of his arrival, he witnesses something that beggars belief; something so unsettling that it puts him in mind of the riot that was his ruination rather than the road to recovery.<br /><br /><a name='more'></a>He wakes up—screaming, even—to the sound of orderlies breaking down the door to the next room over. He has the presence of mind to pull on a pair of a pants before creeping into the corridor, where he sees, instead of the expected inmate hanging from the rafters, a writhing mass of bugs on a bed:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">Mr. Mansfield had apparently either executed a daring midnight escape or received a thrilling rescue, leaving nothing but a pile of insects, presumably gathered and stacked while out in the woods, in his Houdini wake, as some kind of arcane insult. And nobody had any idea yet how he'd done it, because there were no cameras in the bedrooms at Normal Head. Only in the corridors, the public, and the outside spaces.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">Adam sat down, on the northern edge of the room, as far away from the huddle as he could get. How <i>had </i>he done it? (p.36)</blockquote>And so, instead of accepting his meds like a good futurist, and in spite of the fact that "the whole event had a little bit of a Windhoek vibe for him," (ibid.) Adam takes it upon himself to unpack the particulars of this locked room mystery. And it's just as well he does—for Normal Head as a whole, if not necessarily our narrator...<br /><br /><i>Normal </i>is a neat little novella interested in a lot of things you'll be familiar with if you've read almost any of Warren Ellis' earlier efforts. From <i>Transmetropolitan</i> to <i>Trees</i>, he's always been an author immersed in the nearly-now—in emerging technologies and forward-facing philosophies—and the not quite right, and if that's your cup of tea, rest easy. Ellis' latest takes in the death of privacy, nature's place in our age, and the isolating effects of individuality; in the interim, there's a hostage situation over cute cat pictures, a woman who's very much in touch with her gut, and a litany of lurid listening devices.<br /><br />And these are just a handful of the ideas Ellis gets his teeth into here, in exchanges not a little reminiscent of the deep, dark diatribes distributed in the author's excellent newsletter, Orbital Operations. Needless to say,&nbsp;<i>Normal </i>touches on any number of other notions. Too many, if anything, as the whole can come across as incoherent. To a greater or lesser extent, each of its short chapters progresses the text's central threads—namely the disappearance of Mr. Mansfield and the matter of Adam's unravelling—but the bulk of the book is given over to barbed banter that, however eye-opening or entertaining, adds little but length to <i>Normal</i>'s narrative.<br /><br />Similarly, its cast of characters, though conceptually clever and immediately either appealing or appalling, are mostly mouthpieces in practice—a problem perhaps exacerbated by the fact that there are so very many of them. Dickson, the Director, Lela, Clough, Colegrave and Bulat are all potentially powerful, but rather than letting them be people, Ellis puts every one to work, up to and including Adam, whose manic arc is only clarified come the climax.<br /><br />That <i>Normal </i>is nevertheless&nbsp;violently insightful and at times dangerously entertaining is no mean feat given its various failings, many of which, I fear, follow from its form: from the stranding of a novel's worth of characters and the plot of a short in a novella that needs focus as opposed to filler. That's not to say the filler isn't fun, and frighteningly well done, but it is what it is, and I for one wish it wasn't.<br /><br /></div></div></div><div><div style="text-align: center;">***</div></div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /><b>Normal</b><br />by Warren Ellis<br /><br />US Publication: November 2016, FSG<br /><br />Buy this book from<br /><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Normal-Warren-Ellis/dp/0374534977/ref=as_li_ss_tl?_encoding=UTF8&amp;qid=1477309086&amp;sr=8-1&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-21&amp;linkId=53b685d5508aa9ed117e4b4f1509871f" target="_blank">Amazon.co.uk</a>&nbsp;/&nbsp;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Normal-Novel-Warren-Ellis/dp/0374534977/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1477309143&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=normal+ellis&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-20&amp;linkId=7a07e4632fbd662ab6e7fdcd3724434b" target="_blank">Amazon.com</a><br /><a href="http://www.bookdepository.com/book/9780374534974/?a_aid=scotspec" target="_blank">The Book Depository</a><br /><br />Or get&nbsp;<a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Normal-Book-Kindle-Single-Novel-ebook/dp/B01HB7PEGE/ref=as_li_ss_tl?_encoding=UTF8&amp;qid=1477309086&amp;sr=8-1&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-21&amp;linkId=7b73d3097761940d8048f8853d8963df" target="_blank">the Kindle edition</a><br /><i><br /></i><i>Recommended and Related Reading</i><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Gun-Machine-Warren-Ellis/dp/1444730665/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1477403717&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=gun+machine&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-21&amp;linkId=b809219f13d29b7d30d973c4b6b48a2d" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-56z_bU8jlgw/WA9k_2degoI/AAAAAAAAPRI/_eE94BBBhwEM2COxNYp3npNBVsdppM-qQCLcB/s200/gunmachine.jpg" width="130" /></a><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Area-Southern-Annihilation-Authority-Acceptance/dp/0374261172/ref=as_li_ss_tl?_encoding=UTF8&amp;psc=1&amp;refRID=86SAK1S6KHBRSCZW5P3Y&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-21&amp;linkId=9eac9b3834c3bbe04530db2abe6924d4" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-jT7HKA9o-Z4/WA9k_DXmJRI/AAAAAAAAPRE/JKCvoLOiE4UL3LrXpkshWQ4nX8Y1bRcWACLcB/s200/areax.jpg" width="150" /></a><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Jerusalem-One-Hardback-Alan-Moore/dp/0861662520/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1477403710&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=jerusalem&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-21&amp;linkId=0b3c62f75bee62ee68ee82ae00dc6837" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-5JIWcsT1it8/WA9k969BeTI/AAAAAAAAPRA/xyyHEe8SvjEG0wj9Q5twKhhiQ2loWwHXgCLcB/s200/jerusalem.jpg" width="133" /></a></div></div>http://scotspec.blogspot.com/2016/12/book-review-normal-by-warren-ellis.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Niall Alexander)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6498739347909985243.post-2292540492221181034Mon, 28 Nov 2016 14:00:00 +00002016-11-28T14:00:07.774+00:00book reviewDave HutchinsonespionageEurope in WinterFractured Europeparallel universespoliticssfBook Review | Europe in Winter by Dave Hutchinson<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-G0oSYcUsH1k/WCRtpijLYBI/AAAAAAAAPSg/xV5biVdOd0sO4Io0RVVWdOcOYsptvtf5gCLcB/s1600/europeinwinter.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-G0oSYcUsH1k/WCRtpijLYBI/AAAAAAAAPSg/xV5biVdOd0sO4Io0RVVWdOcOYsptvtf5gCLcB/s400/europeinwinter.jpg" width="260" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>Union has come. The Community is now the largest nation in Europe; trains run there from as far afield as London and Prague. It is an era of unprecedented peace and prosperity.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>So what is the reason for a huge terrorist outrage? Why do the Community and Europe meet in secret, exchanging hostages? And who are Les Coureurs des Bois?</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>Along with a motley crew of strays and mafiosi and sleeper agents, Rudi sets out to answer these questions – only to discover that the truth lies both closer to home and farther away than anyone could possibly imagine.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: center;"><i>***</i></div></div><div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />Both in Britain and abroad, so much has changed in the years since the release of Dave Hutchinson's Arthur C. Clarke Award nominated <i>Europe in Autumn</i>&nbsp;that the mind positively boggles. In 2014 <a href="http://www.tor.com/2014/02/19/book-review-europe-in-autumn-dave-hutchinson/" target="_blank">I described</a> its depiction of a Europe decimated by division "as plausible as it is novel," but I'll be damned if it isn't beginning to look visionary.<br /><br />What shape the differences democracy has recently wrought will take is, as yet, anyone's guess. Everything's up for grabs, not least the ideals we hold nearest and dearest—just as they are in the world of the Fractured Europe sequence: a manic mosaic of "nations and polities and duchies and sanjaks and earldoms and principalities and communes." (p.12)<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">The situation was, if anything, even worse the further East you went. Beyond Rus—European Russia—and Sibir was a patchwork of republics and statelets and nations and kingdoms and khanates and 'stans which had been crushed out of existence by History, reconstituted, fragmented, reinvented, fragmented again, absorbed, reabsorbed and recreated." (p.43)</blockquote>But that's not all—hell, that's not even the half of it—as readers of <i>Europe at Midnight </i>will recall. That "mad story about a family of wizards and a map" elaborated brilliantly on the existence of a place called the Community: an impossible plane of space modelled on idyllic little England. Next to no one knew about it till now, but having kept its distance for decades, the Community is finally making its presence felt by way of a revolutionary railway.<br /><br />The Line is being laid all across the continent, connecting the Community to the real world in a real sense, and although most folks don't mind, there are, of course, those—now more than ever there are those—who want to keep the outsiders out, and are willing to do whatever it takes to make their isolationist case. To wit, <i>Europe in Winter </i>opens on an awful atrocity, as a train packed with passengers travelling along that mathemagical track is attacked.<br /><br />You'd think the authorities would come a-running with such loss of life rife, but Europe is so splintered that no one of its gaggle of governments wants anything to do with it. Even the innumerable NGOs are steering out of fear, such that solving the problem, if it's going to be solved at all, falls, finally, to the Coureur and erstwhile cook Hutchinson introduced us to in <i>Europe in Autumn</i>.<br /><br /><a name='more'></a>Rudi is a little older than he was last time our paths crossed, and a little wiser—these days, he walks with a cane and has some grey in his hair—but it's the way the world's changed that's affected the greatest differences in him. His job as a glorified postman is nearly meaningless now that the Community has made international travel trifling, and to add insult to injury, even making good food isn't doing it for Rudi, such that he just about jumps at the chance to take actions that matter.<br /><br />What he finds... well. That would be telling. Suffice it to say that the people behind the people who got this show on the road may not be activists after all:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">"Governments, nations, borders, they're all&nbsp;<i>surface</i>, they always have been. [...] The real structure underlying it all is money, and the institutions which control it. Finance houses, banks, organised crime; if you drill down deep enough, it's all the same. Money has no nationality, no allegiance. While nations rise and fall, it remains the same. It's the most powerful polity of all." (p.265)</blockquote>Rudi is assisted in his investigation of said Situation by a few familiar faces, including Rupert of Hentzau from book two. And in this fittingly fractured fashion the cracking characters of <i>Europe in Autumn </i>and <i>Europe at Midnight </i>come together, just as their narratives have, in this fittingly fractured finale. As Rudi asserts early on,&nbsp;"everything is interesting; the hard part is working out how it all fits together." (p.37)<br /><br />And it <i>is </i>difficult. There's a lot going on—more, perhaps, than there needed to be—and however independently interesting the many and various threads of this last act are, at points, unable to see how, say, a dalliance in some disused subway tunnels could conceivably be adding to the overarching narrative, I almost lost patience with <i>Europe in Winter</i>. That I didn't, at the end of the day, is down to the knowledge that nothing in the Fractured Europe sequence so far has come easily, and Hutchinson has, in the past, squared everything away eventually; that, and the book's self-aware sense of humour:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">The problem with some people who worked in Intelligence, [Rudi] had discovered down the years, was that they took it too fucking seriously, bought into the whole le Carre thing of dead drops and honeytraps and one-time pads, whereas in reality it was just a case of continually winging it. (p.101)</blockquote>Winging it is one thing you couldn't accuse the author of <i>Europe in Winter </i>doing, because come the conclusion, Rudi "arranged everything in what appeared to be chronological order, as best he could," (p.260) and incredibly, the text's disparate threads do come together. Hutchinson doesn't offer up easy answers to our <i>every </i>question, but life, he reminds us, is like that:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">It never tied things up nearly; no one ever got to see the whole story, and anyway the stories never ended, just branched off into infinity. You got used to that too, as a Coureur. You jumped a Package from Point A to Point B and you never knew what happened after that. Most of the time you never even knew what you were carrying. (p.294)</blockquote>That's really been this series to a T. And that's perfectly fine with me. With its understated stakes and imperturbable pace, its deliberate density and intellectual intensity, it's easy to see why some readers have bounced off the Fractured Europe sequence, but the best things in literature are far from free, and this is one of those—those best things, that is. You have to work at it, but it's worth it, not least because what Hutchinson has to say about the world today is now more imperative that ever.<br /><br /></div></div></div><div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: center;">***</div></div></div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>Europe in Winter</b></div><div style="text-align: center;">by Dave Hutchinson</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">UK &amp; US Publication: November 2016, Solaris</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">Buy this book from</div><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/d/Books/Europe-Winter-Dave-Hutchinson/1781084637/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1478782103&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=europe+winter+hutchinson&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-21&amp;linkId=9f3b9494825be993479ef7c64387607c" target="_blank">Amazon.co.uk</a>&nbsp;/&nbsp;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Europe-Winter-Dave-Hutchinson/dp/1781084637/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1478782113&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=europe+winter+hutchinson&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-20&amp;linkId=423b2743b86ab06c734a85207ed8c248" target="_blank">Amazon.com</a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.bookdepository.com/book/9781781084632/?a_aid=scotspec" target="_blank">The Book Depository</a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">Or get&nbsp;<a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Europe-Winter-Fractured-Sequence-Book-ebook/dp/B01LFM09O8/ref=as_li_ss_tl?_encoding=UTF8&amp;qid=1478782103&amp;sr=8-1&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-21&amp;linkId=36695eadd2cd93d7a4b991244329be1d" target="_blank">the Kindle edition</a></div><br /><i></i><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><i><i>Recommended and Related Reading</i></i></div><i></i><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Europe-at-Midnight-Dave-Hutchinson/dp/1781083983/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1479298535&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=europe+at+midnight&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-21&amp;linkId=3a36d0640c366c85e338a0f0488b5c23" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-jy-VQRRw_AY/WCxOR4_UcII/AAAAAAAAPTw/QEcuwTl7SHEo7I9jqMfAu9yDA1_i1nrMQCLcB/s200/europeatmidnight.jpg" width="130" /></a><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Pigeon-Tunnel-Stories-My-Life/dp/0241257557/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1479298525&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=le+carre&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-21&amp;linkId=4ffbbb3ff5c5b7b3312ff7b3fcd38360" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-hCsBZX-pr9Y/WCxOS65RXmI/AAAAAAAAPT0/brXhpA4e7Zcbs6kF_YA1FrG_Y5MZcaYHwCLcB/s200/pigeontunnel.jpg" width="130" /></a><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/d/Books/Race-Nina-Allan/178565036X/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1479298598&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=race+allan&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-21&amp;linkId=3ff2db838c43532a6f9fb966dc4aead5" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-LYSy9awQ5Q8/WCxOUKYRJDI/AAAAAAAAPT4/qdxv3A9gRjU1WP507T7GgQmRnPyqkPAYgCLcB/s200/race-new.jpg" width="127" /></a></div></div>http://scotspec.blogspot.com/2016/11/book-review-europe-in-winter-by-dave.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Niall Alexander)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6498739347909985243.post-8845519776640760807Thu, 17 Nov 2016 14:00:00 +00002016-11-17T14:00:29.560+00:00Alison Littlewoodbook reviewfairiesfantasylove storiesperiod piecesThe Hidden PeopleVictorianaBook Review | The Hidden People by Alison Littlewood<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-T6rfXE57hEI/WBMvAxtTE1I/AAAAAAAAPRc/HKQz_eOni64iA0YXMmQJCj8kSJg-KFKrACLcB/s1600/hiddenpeople.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-T6rfXE57hEI/WBMvAxtTE1I/AAAAAAAAPRc/HKQz_eOni64iA0YXMmQJCj8kSJg-KFKrACLcB/s400/hiddenpeople.jpg" width="253" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>Pretty Lizzie Higgs is gone, burned to death on her own hearth—but was she really a changeling, as her husband insists? Albie Mirralls met his cousin only once, in 1851, within the grand glass arches of the Crystal Palace, but unable to countenance the rumours that surround her murder, he leaves his young wife in London and travels to Halfoak, a village steeped in superstition.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>Albie begins to look into Lizzie's death, but in this place where the old tales hold sway and the hidden people supposedly roam, answers are slippery and further tragedy is just a step away...</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>***</i></div><div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />In the beginning, a bang: a promising and potentially explosive prologue, or a scene that's suggestive of all the fun to come. That's a fine way for a story—especially a scary story—to start. But you've got to be smart. You don't want to give yourself nowhere to go by starting the show with the showstopper, and I dare say that's exactly what Alison Littlewood did with her debut.<br /><br />Chilling and thrilling in equal measure, and at once creepy and weepy, <i>A Cold Season </i>was a hell of a hard act to follow, and although both&nbsp;<i>Path of Needles </i>and <i>The Unquiet House </i>were reasonably well received, nothing Littlewood has written since said has surpassed its macabre mastery. Certainly not <a href="http://www.tor.com/2015/08/31/book-reviews-a-cold-silence-alison-littlewood/" target="_blank">last year's tedious sequel</a>. Happily, her newest novel rights almost every one of <i>A Cold Silence</i>'s throng of wrongs. I'd go farther than that, in fact; I'd assert that&nbsp;<i>The Hidden People&nbsp;</i>is the aforementioned author's most accomplished effort yet—if not necessarily her most accessible.<br /><br />Albert Mirralls—Albie to his nearest and dearest—only met his lovely cousin once, at the Great Exhibition of 1851 that saw the unveiling of that transparent marvel, the Crystal Palace, but little Lizzie Higgs, with her sweet songs and her sure steps, made such an impression on our man in those moments that when he hears of her murder more than a decade later, he immediately leaves the life he's built behind in order to address her death.<br /><br />In Halfoak, a superstitious village arranged around a great, twisted tree, Albie is told the whole of the sordid story his sophisticated father had only hinted at. Little Lizzie had gone on to marry James Higgs, a shoemaker, and though they had been happy in their house on the hill, their inability to bear children became the talk of the town in time. Higgs, for his part, had an unusual idea why: he thought his wonderful wife had been replaced by a changeling.&nbsp;As the local publican puts it:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">"The good folk, as they call them—mainly from fear, I think—the quiet ones, the hidden people—they're fading, you see? [...] Their race is weak. And so they take changelings—human children, or women who can bear them, to strengthen their lines. And in their place they leave one of their own, worn-out and old, bewitched to look like the one they're meant to replace, though of course they do not thrive; they soon sicken or die. Or they leave a stock of wood, similarly enchanted, and with similar outcome. These changelings can be identified by their weaknesses, or some disfigurement, or by a sweet temper turning of a sudden into querulous and unnatural ways. They might refuse to speak or eat. A child might become a milksop or a squalling affliction. A good wife may be transformed into a shrew. There are many ways of telling." (p.89)</blockquote>Tragically, the recent disappearance of a wooden broom and the entirely understandable turning of Lizzie's temper was all it took to convince Higgs that his wife was not the woman he married. To wit, he tried to drive the fairy from his home. He tried iron; he tried herbs; and, all else having failed, he tried fire. "And she was consumed by it." (p.13)<br /><br /><a name='more'></a>So it is that Albie's first task is to arrange for the burial of Lizzie's horrifically burned body, but when no one from Halfoak comes to her funeral, he realises he has to find out why. "Could any good be the result of such delving? I had come here to gain some sense of her life. I had come to say good-bye." (p.51) But surely Lizzie, the first love of Albie's life, deserves better than the bare minimum. She deserves, he determines, to be put to rest properly, and for that to happen, the man who murdered her—a man who may escape the noose on account of his fairy-mania—must pay the price for the wicked things he did.<br /><br />Written as it is in period-appropriate English,&nbsp;<i>The Hidden People&nbsp;</i>isn't the easiest of reads,&nbsp;and the dreaded dialect that dominates its dialogue makes it doubly difficult. But as the author asserts in the afterword, Yorkshire "is a place full of richness and beauty and bluffness and odd words and wonderful sayings, even if, as Albie discovers, it may sometimes be a little short on consonants." (p.372) and Littlewood's decision to depict the narrative in this fashion does wonders for <i>The Hidden People</i>'s sense of place and time.<br /><br />Halfoak in particular is terrific. On the surface, it's an idyllic little village, "quite charming in its rusticity" (p.20)—rather like the arched stone bridge that leads to Lizzie and her husband's hilltop cottage—and home to a close-knit community of serious, if simple souls. It has its history and it has its traditions, does Halfoak, and at the start, that adds to its charm. But as painterly and quaint as Littlewood's fictional village is, it's also isolated, and that last has allowed some strange beliefs and behaviours to become the norm. <i>The Wicker Man </i>comes to mind, and indeed, in Lizzie's killing, practically comes to pass.<br /><br />But what if there's a good reason for the villagers' wariness of the fairies? That's a question Albie initially dismisses, with a shake of his head "over the stubborn ignorance in which I had found myself mired," (p.84) but as time goes on, he starts to see certain things himself: things he can't easily explain away. Then, when his wife surprises him by leaving London to keep him company, a familiar suspicion grips him:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">This could not be my wife. This thing possessed her form, but everything she had once been was absent. I knew then, as certainly as I knew myself, that this was not the woman I had married. (p.277)</blockquote>The same suspicion, then, that's already driven one man to murder. That it might yet lead to another affects a sense of tension that makes <i>The Hidden People</i> deeply uneasy reading, and it's to Littlewood's credit that she sustains this uncertainty so cleverly, without landing on one explanation or the other till the whole of her tremendous tale is told.<br /><br />It might be a little overlong, and its sentences somewhat stiff, but work at it and it will, I'm sure, work on you. As mesmerising as it is magical, and as quickening as it is at times sickening,&nbsp;<i>The Hidden People </i>is, at the last, an excellent successor to Littlewood's darkly-sparkling debut.<br /><div><br /></div></div></div></div><div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: center;">***</div></div></div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>The Hidden People</b></div><div style="text-align: center;">by Alison Littlewood</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">UK Publication: October 2016, Jo Fletcher</div><div style="text-align: center;">US Publication: November 2016, Jo Fletcher</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">Buy this book from</div><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hidden-People-Alison-Littlewood/dp/1848669909/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1477652141&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=The+Hidden+People+by+Alison+Littlewood&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-21&amp;linkId=611fe500e43625dce3c3d11a42991940" target="_blank">Amazon.co.uk</a>&nbsp;/&nbsp;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Hidden-People-Alison-Littlewood/dp/1681442930/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1477652156&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=The+Hidden+People+by+Alison+Littlewood&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-20&amp;linkId=5893db5871c1e6da5a940eb95a1bf0ed" target="_blank">Amazon.com</a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.bookdepository.com/book/9781786480781/?a_aid=scotspec" target="_blank">The Book Depository</a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">Or get&nbsp;<a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hidden-People-Alison-Littlewood-ebook/dp/B01ARXVU9O/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1477652141&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=The+Hidden+People+by+Alison+Littlewood&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-21&amp;linkId=f36234b74471b9aa443c4dafa3cbea1e" target="_blank">the Kindle edition</a></div><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><i><i>Recommended and Related Reading</i></i><br /><i><i><br /></i></i></div><i></i><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Cold-Season-Book/dp/1780871368/ref=as_li_ss_tl?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1477652573&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=cold+season&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-21&amp;linkId=080300098309ef0722f9301bfa7fa0fa" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-CcH2X9ufBDE/WBMvCJ5Pl-I/AAAAAAAAPRg/HD4ThO4EDoIga6Wov5pmzBWp4Pj-H8_MACEw/s200/coldseason.jpg" width="129" /></a><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Kind-Folk-Ramsey-Campbell/dp/0765382458/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1477652579&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=kind+folk&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-21&amp;linkId=23532a9f80ae8af4fadb6b46b0fd7b77" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-myx6gRlDpqQ/WBMu_hjHQ3I/AAAAAAAAPRY/e7vsutSdX2s-JXB0H6UCymPxwVCcTvd-gCEw/s200/kindfolk-tor.jpg" width="133" /></a><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Head-Full-Ghosts-Paul-Tremblay/dp/1785653679/ref=as_li_ss_tl?_encoding=UTF8&amp;qid=&amp;sr=&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-21&amp;linkId=9e87eb2f32c30751e4721ece17e7be10" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-aieW9mkoiEA/WBMwgdRqwII/AAAAAAAAPRo/s3_rzZgsjtMWVpKBnwL7pYvn6S1fP6ylwCLcB/s200/headfullofghosts.jpg" width="135" /></a></div></div>http://scotspec.blogspot.com/2016/11/book-review-hidden-people-by-alison.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Niall Alexander)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6498739347909985243.post-4712244501834863649Tue, 15 Nov 2016 14:00:00 +00002016-11-15T14:00:04.008+00:00book reviewghost storieshistorical fictionhorrorMichelle Pavermountaineeringsibling rivalrysurvivalThin AirBook Review | Thin Air by Michelle Paver<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-AeZNZuSu_nw/V9-2JrZYa4I/AAAAAAAAPMw/PRytH-y6HbgbNst_gDXmDG3oJ45xtBlfwCLcB/s1600/thinair-uk.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-AeZNZuSu_nw/V9-2JrZYa4I/AAAAAAAAPMw/PRytH-y6HbgbNst_gDXmDG3oJ45xtBlfwCLcB/s320/thinair-uk.jpg" width="218" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>The Himalayas, 1935.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>Kangchenjunga. Third-highest peak on earth. Greatest killer of them all.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>Five Englishmen set off from Darjeeling, determined to conquer the sacred summit. But courage can only take them so far—and the mountain is not their only foe.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>As the wind dies, the dread grows. Mountain sickness. The horrors of extreme altitude. A past that will not stay buried.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>And sometimes, the truth does not set you free.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>***</i></div><div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />It was on the back of the award-winning, six-part Chronicles of Ancient Darkness that Michelle Paver put out <i>Dark Matter</i>. A ghost story inspired by her lifelong love of the Arctic, it attracted flattering comparisons to the work of such giants of the genre as M. R. James and Susan Hill, and became, before long, a bona fide bestseller.<br /><br />That the author has now turned her hand to another tale in the same vise-like vein can hardly be seen as surprising; what can is the fact that it's taken her six years and another complete children's series, namely the Gods and Warriors novels. But given the strength of <i>Thin Air</i>, a short, stirring and altogether masterful narrative set on the sheer slopes of the world's third-highest hill, if it takes another decade for Paver to perfect its successor, that's a decade I'll be willing to wait.<br /><br />It's 1935, and mountaineering has the nation by the nape. Our protagonist Stephen Pearce has always been a keen climber, but he certainly wasn't supposed to be conquering Kangchenjunga this spring. He was <i>meant </i>to be getting married and starting a family, but something about the life he could see stretched out ahead of him—and the death, yes—didn't feel quite right, so when his big brother Kits basically begged him to follow in the footsteps of Edmund Lyell on an expedition up one of the Himalaya's highest peaks, Stephen said yes.<br /><br />Yet Kits' request wasn't exactly selfless. He needed a medic for the expedition to go ahead, and if securing one meant upending his younger sibling's entire existence, then that was a price Kits was only too happy to pay to win the day. As Stephen reasons:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">I know my brother. A couple of years ago, someone came upon Irvine's ice axe on Everest's north-west ridge, and Kits sulked for weeks. Why wasn't&nbsp;<i>he&nbsp;</i>the one to find it and get all the glory? That's what he's after now: relics of the Lyell Expedition; and a chance to complete what the great man began, by being the first in the world to conquer an eight thousand-metre peak—with the added lustre of planting the Union Jack on the summit, and beating the bloody Germans. (p.19)</blockquote>Brothers they may be, but Stephen and Kits haven't always—or even often—gotten on, and for all that they're on their best behaviour at the outset of the trek, as the weather closes in and things threaten to get grim, the tension between them fairly flares.<br /><br /><a name='more'></a>Now we'll get to the ghost of this ghost story in due course, but it's this developing dynamic that truly underpins Paver's tale. It starts simply enough, with the brothers being brothers, but the gentle jibes that fly at first become unbearably barbed before long, a bit of healthy competition turns into the worst sort of one-upmanship—and all this as they pick their way up a monstrous mountain that's already killed countless competent climbers:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">The sight of it is like music, a deep, strong note thrilling through me. It's utterly different from Everest, or Annapurna, or K2. No lone triangular summit, but a vast broad-shouldered massif spiked with several chaotic peaks, with one jagged fang just dominating the rest. (p.10)</blockquote>They really can't afford to be distracted. Alas, that they are, and by more than one another, for as they leave the "fairytale forests" of the lower slopes—note the unreality even here—they emerge into an "eerie upper world haunted by unseen creatures: snow leopard, wild blue sheep—and the coolies' imaginary spirits. To them, this wilderness is thronged. Every rock and stream possesses demons," (p.45) demons that our Englishmen dismiss. Initially.<br /><br />But truth to tell, there <i>does </i>seems to be someone, or something else on&nbsp;Kangchenjunga. Something that's signified by an uncanny silence. Something that Stephen, empiricist that he is, struggles to explain away—though he absolutely tries:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">It's no good, I have to face the truth. There's something terribly wrong with Camp Two,&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">What do I mean by wrong? Well I don't mean ghosts. Not in the sense of disembodied spirits, I don't believe in them. [...] But energy, now. Energy can be neither created nor destroyed, so isn't it at least possible that some kind of energy—perhaps magnetic, or even some force of emotion—may have lingered here for years? And perhaps—perhaps there's something about me that makes me a sort of physical medium for that energy: like a battery, or a lightning rod?&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">It's a hypothesis, and it makes me feel slightly better. I've put a frame around the wrongness. I've contained it. (pp.122-123)</blockquote>Of course, containers break, and when the ghost of this ghost story does come to the fore, it's all the more nerve-wracking because of its protracted absence. Now I don't want to name its nature, but it's a fitting sort of spirit to find near an evil peak, and one ably anticipated by the back story Paver shares in the early sections of the text, such that when the hammer finally falls, you feel it has every reason to.<br /><br />In short, prepare to be scared. But it'd be a grave mistake to go into <i>Thin Air </i>expecting a standard supernatural narrative. What horror there is here is&nbsp;tied&nbsp;primarily to the characters: to Stephen and Kits and their struggle to survive in a landscape where almost nothing does; and to the climbers that tried and tragically failed to conquer Kangchenjunga both before and after the brothers at this book's breast.<br /><i><br /></i>Impeccably researched, carefully controlled and terrifically told, <i>Thin Air </i>is a brief but brilliant exploration of the extent of human endeavour. It's about the incredible things people, when pushed, can do... and the terrible things, too.<br /><br /></div></div></div><div><div style="text-align: center;">***</div></div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /><b>Thin Air</b><br />by Michelle Paver<br /><br />UK Publication: October 2016, Orion<br /><br />Buy this book from<br /><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Thin-Air-Michelle-Paver/dp/1409163342/ref=as_li_ss_tl?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1474278885&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=Book+Review+%7C+Thin+Air+by+Michelle+Paver&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-21&amp;linkId=3f83bbc65abe57d850e42c8e06d74628" target="_blank">Amazon.co.uk</a>&nbsp;/&nbsp;<a href="http://www.bookdepository.com/book/9781409163343/?a_aid=scotspec" target="_blank">The Book Depository</a><br /><br />Or get&nbsp;<a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Thin-Air-Michelle-Paver-ebook/dp/B01EG5HKXO/ref=as_li_ss_tl?_encoding=UTF8&amp;qid=1474278885&amp;sr=1-1&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-21&amp;linkId=409efd341cc551a6d3f3208a49984938" target="_blank">the Kindle edition</a><br /><i><br /></i><i>Recommended and Related Reading</i><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dark-Matter-Michelle-Paver/dp/1409121186/ref=as_li_ss_tl?_encoding=UTF8&amp;qid=&amp;sr=&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-21&amp;linkId=13a2ad4e3a9122f8860cffff687ed5f8" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-myuCLeTNZVk/V9-2LYSH9rI/AAAAAAAAPM0/FIBmL_9xqVY8asSvGuef9rl4A-shAKM6QCLcB/s200/darkmatter-pb.jpg" width="130" /></a><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Climbers-Novel-M-John-Harrison/dp/0575092173/ref=as_li_ss_tl?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1474279109&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=climbers+harrison&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-21&amp;linkId=ee071e939d4fc3ef5da4387b553922aa" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-4vmoerAjP2k/V9-26lVtZsI/AAAAAAAAPM8/b400puqpdMczj3anwomYe2UuvAtzaUQ6wCLcB/s200/climbers.jpg" width="129" /></a><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Abominable-Dan-Simmons/dp/0751548707/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1474279063&amp;sr=8-10&amp;keywords=dan+simmons&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-21&amp;linkId=b1735fa054eb7962fefa05f6f6690b50" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-JtS0fTqjTCM/V9-25FOnN6I/AAAAAAAAPM4/kTkE_BPpVqsnG8CU1hwVe4Q83vO_xXK0ACLcB/s200/abominable-pb.jpg" width="126" /></a></div></div>http://scotspec.blogspot.com/2016/11/book-review-thin-air-by-michelle-paver.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Niall Alexander)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6498739347909985243.post-2391238999689786103Fri, 11 Nov 2016 14:00:00 +00002016-11-11T14:00:12.113+00:00A Closed and Common OrbitAIBecky Chambersbook reviewcoming of agefamilylove storiessfWayfarersBook Review | A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-nXNIA4QFcSA/V_NxmahaTlI/AAAAAAAAPPM/6PGO0bqxKZY5-dMQP9-2GF1JXUpt0EP1ACLcB/s1600/closedandcommon-uk.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-nXNIA4QFcSA/V_NxmahaTlI/AAAAAAAAPPM/6PGO0bqxKZY5-dMQP9-2GF1JXUpt0EP1ACLcB/s320/closedandcommon-uk.jpg" width="208" /></a><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-oGwIJVDUH4U/V_NxmoeNP3I/AAAAAAAAPPQ/4pOXzpns_28CBH-G5VJXW2cwXAQSQkMMwCLcB/s1600/closedandcommon-us.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-oGwIJVDUH4U/V_NxmoeNP3I/AAAAAAAAPPQ/4pOXzpns_28CBH-G5VJXW2cwXAQSQkMMwCLcB/s320/closedandcommon-us.jpg" width="212" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>Lovelace was once merely a ship's artificial intelligence. When she wakes up in an new body, following a total system shut-down and reboot, she has to start over in a synthetic body, in a world where her kind are illegal. She's never felt so alone.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>But she's not alone, not really. Pepper, one of the engineers who risked life and limb to reinstall Lovelace, is determined to help her adjust to her new world. Because Pepper knows a thing or two about starting over.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>Together, Pepper and Lovey will discover that, huge as the galaxy may be, it's anything but empty.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>***</i></div><div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />Life is a lot of things. It's intense and it's tedious; it's exhausting as often as it's&nbsp;exhilarating. Sometimes it's kind of delightful; sometimes it's quite, quite terrifying. "None of us have a rule book," as Pepper puts it. "None of us know what we're doing here." (p.317) But we each have our own ideas, don't we? We all have our aspirations, our particular purposes. Some of us want to start families. Some of us want to make successes of ourselves. Some of us want to see the world. Some of us want to pave the way for change.<br /><br />Insofar as she ever wanted anything, Lovelace—the AI formerly installed on the spaceship which went <i>The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet </i>in Becky Chambers' radiant debut—Lovelace wanted to make the humans in her hull happy. That's why she opted to be installed in a body kit:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">At the time, it had seemed like the best course, the cleanest option. She had come into existence where another mind should have been. She wasn't what the Wayfarer crew was expecting, or hoping for. Her presence upset them, and that meant she had to go. That was why she'd left—not because she'd wanted to, not because she'd truly understood what it would mean, but because the crew was upset, and she was the reason for it. [...] She'd left because it was in her design to be accommodating, to put others first, to make everyone else comfortable, no matter what. (p.112)</blockquote>But what of <i>her </i>comfort?<br /><br />That's the question at the centre of <i>A Closed and Common Orbit</i>, the sensitive sequel of sorts to the novel that was nominated for any number of awards and accolades, including the Baileys Prize for Women's Fiction, the Tiptree Award, the Kitschies Golden Tentacle and the Arthur C. Clarke Award. I say "sequel of sorts" because Chambers' new book only features a few of <i>The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet</i>'s characters, and isn't in the least bit interested the fate of the Wayfarer. It is, in other words, entirely standalone—unlike so many of the struggling sequels that insist on this—although a passing familiarity with the larger canvas of said series is sure to prove a plus.<br /><br />In any case, Lovelace. Just imagine, for a moment: if life, despite its heights, is still sometimes too much for us—we who have been here, trying and failing and feeling for <i>years—</i>then what must it be like for someone such as she, someone who has never even been called upon to pretend to be more than a program?<br /><br /><a name='more'></a>Hard hardly describes her dilemma; Lovelace is really going to have to try to get by. And she does—albeit for others, initially. Primarily for the aforementioned Pepper, whose awful origins as a disposable person placed on a forbidding factory planet are interspersed with Lovelace's subtler struggles. It was Pepper who housed Lovelace in the banned body kit in the first instance, and if one is caught, the other is surely screwed—and so too would be Blue, Pepper's partner, who also figures into the dramatic flashbacks.<br /><br />For Lovelace, fitting in begins with a new name: Sidra, for no better reason than because. Soon, she moves into Pepper and Blue's spare room, and starts working with them in their shop in the Sixtop district. That's a lot of newness, to be sure, but no amount of change in the day-to-day can overcome her old programming. One protocol in particular makes her interactions with others a real risk:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">Already, the honesty protocol was proving to be a challenge, and her inability to disable it herself made her uneasy. Housed within a ship, she might have been ambivalent about it. But out here, where she was hyper-aware of everything she was and wasn't, truth left her vulnerable. (p.24)</blockquote>Honesty might be the best policy, but life, Sidra realises, is full of fiction, and when you have something huge to hide and no way to hide it, the ability to tell a little white lie would be one way to keep the Powers That Be at bay—and that's what sets Sidra down the path that <i>A Closed and Common Orbit&nbsp;</i>charts.<br /><br />Returning readers will recall that, though the journey was <a href="http://www.tor.com/2015/03/17/book-review-the-long-way-to-a-small-angry-planet-by-becky-chambers/" target="_blank">a genuine joy</a>,&nbsp;<i>The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet </i>wasn't what you'd call eventful, and as above, you know, so below. To wit, if the paucity of that novel's plot proved a problem for you, know now that&nbsp;<i>A Closed and Common Orbit </i>is not the follow-up you fancied. Instead, it doubles down on the small, character-focused moments that made its predecessor such an unfettered pleasure, and in that respect,&nbsp;it's no less of a success.<br /><br />Sidra, Pepper, Blue—and Sidra's first friend, the tattoo artist Tak, too—are just decent people doing what decent people do; trying to find the right thing, but failing, from time to time. Sometimes, they're selfish, or small-minded, but when they are, they're able to realise the error of their ways, and put what they've learned into practice. Take Tak, who, on finding out that Sidra is not what she seems, reacts rather badly. After cooling xyr heels, however, xe apologises profusely, and Tak is a markedly more human character hereafter for the mistakes xe's made—quite the feat for an Aeulon, actually.<br /><br />On the face of it,&nbsp;<i>A Closed and Common Orbit </i>sounds like a very different enterprise than its popular predecessor. In that it takes place not in the unimaginable vastness of space but almost entirely on a planet—indeed, in a single district—and has only a handful of characters as opposed to <i>The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet</i>'s ensemble,&nbsp;it runs the risk of seeming unambitious. But, like Sidra herself, who doesn't differentiate between threats little and large, it isn't:</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><blockquote class="tr_bq">With every step there was something new to observe. She couldn't help but pay attention, make note, file it away. Out in space,&nbsp;<i>something new&nbsp;</i>could be a meteoroid, a ship full of pirates, an engine fire. Here, it was just shopkeepers. Travellers. Musicians. Kids. And behind every one of them, there was another, and another—an infinity of harmless instances of something new. She knew that there was a big difference between a shopkeeper and a meteoroid, but her protocols didn't, and they clawed at her. She didn't know how to stop. She&nbsp;<i>couldn't&nbsp;</i>stop. (p.41)</blockquote></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>A Closed and Common Orbit&nbsp;</i>may be smaller in scope than the book before it, but in its focus and its force, in the sheer delight it takes in the discoveries it documents, it's as fine and as fantastical as Chambers' absolute&nbsp;darling of a debut.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div></div></div><div><div style="text-align: center;">***</div></div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /><b>A Closed and Common Orbit</b><br />by Becky Chambers<br /><br />UK Publication: October 2016, Hodder<br />US Publication: March 2017, Harper Voyager<br /><br />Buy this book from<br /><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Closed-Common-Orbit-Wayfarers/dp/1473621445/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1475571732&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=closed+common+orbit&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-21&amp;linkId=bb0ae0cde1e55003f9a21f00da6e807b" target="_blank">Amazon.co.uk</a>&nbsp;/&nbsp;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Closed-Common-Orbit-Wayfarers/dp/0062569406/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1475571874&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=closed+common+orbit&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-20&amp;linkId=7b0260c222e5d159d38ed6808061985d" target="_blank">Amazon.com</a><br /><a href="http://www.bookdepository.com/book/9781473621435/?a_aid=scotspec" target="_blank">The Book Depository</a><br /><br />Or get&nbsp;<a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Closed-Common-Orbit-Wayfarers-ebook/dp/B01ARXVTFE/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1475571732&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=closed+common+orbit&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-21&amp;linkId=21457f738ec31d2e6b9e18a75ea4db31" target="_blank">the Kindle edition</a><br /><i><br /></i><i>Recommended and Related Reading</i><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Long-Way-Small-Angry-Planet/dp/1473619815/ref=as_li_ss_tl?_encoding=UTF8&amp;qid=&amp;sr=&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-21&amp;linkId=34da092d56c06ea37e1c01160198115c" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-964MUVANMRo/V_NxrQsAnJI/AAAAAAAAPPU/q5LRuvabf4og3fdPW8EX-wRiBuo01jJzgCEw/s200/longway-uk.jpg" width="130" /></a><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Best-All-Possible-Worlds/dp/1780871686/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1475572342&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=best+of+all+possible+worlds&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-21&amp;linkId=56f6a2a78732e07cdace2b38d285aae7" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-uw-bocC85bE/V_NysoVqJuI/AAAAAAAAPPg/3aYbe2QB0dQBsUP_XENp7J3cYLgdexJhQCLcB/s200/bestofallpossibleworlds-pb.jpg" width="130" /></a><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/All-Birds-Charlie-Jane-Anders/dp/1785650556/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;psc=1&amp;refRID=4KZ5RGY3CRATCT7DYN06&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-21&amp;linkId=a2f35bdf4d92a9d0078ff9ddcf41078b" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-zb13oHaMr8w/V_NyraOjUpI/AAAAAAAAPPc/vHWrIoH_ZcsdaB2lKMr5DeDxXKq_XzcCQCLcB/s200/allthebirds-uk.jpg" width="128" /></a></div></div>http://scotspec.blogspot.com/2016/11/book-review-closed-and-common-orbit-by.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Niall Alexander)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6498739347909985243.post-1504954149590268157Mon, 24 Oct 2016 13:00:00 +00002016-10-24T14:00:09.513+01:00Dark Made DawndystopiaendingsJ. P. SmytheprisonssfThe Australia Trilogyunexpected journeysBook Review | Dark Made Dawn by J. P. Smythe<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-hvW_oBokRnw/V-j2sHzJMGI/AAAAAAAAPNo/fAFNT6vBXEEHXkIXccgRIsObVNvZjAtbQCEw/s1600/darkmadedawn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-hvW_oBokRnw/V-j2sHzJMGI/AAAAAAAAPNo/fAFNT6vBXEEHXkIXccgRIsObVNvZjAtbQCEw/s400/darkmadedawn.jpg" width="260" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>There was one truth on Australia, the derelict ship on which Chan was born and raised: you fight or you die. Usually both.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>But everything on Australia was a lie. Abandoned and alone, Chan was forced to live a terrible existence on the fringes of society, Australia's only survivor after a terrible crash-landing on Earth.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>But Chan discovered she was not alone. Together with the unlikeliest of allies, Chan carved out a place for herself on Earth. And now the time has come: she's finally found a reason to keep going. But friends have become enemies, and enemies have become something worse. It's time for Chan to create her own truths, and discover a life beyond fighting and death: a</i><i>&nbsp;life beyond Australia.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>***</i></div><div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />The Girl Who Fell to Earth finds her feet in <i>Dark Made Dawn</i>, the vital concluding volume of the&nbsp;Arthur C. Clarke Award nominated&nbsp;Australia Trilogy by J. P. Smythe.<br /><br />It's been a long road for Chan, who murdered her mother mere moments after we met her, crash-landed the prison ship she'd lived on her whole life a little later, and has had to do a whole host of other awful things simply to survive since—but her hellish journey is almost at an end. She's been reunited with her former frenemy, Rex; they've found employment, of a sort, amongst the automatons of walled-off Washington; and the nearby nomads have offered them a home away from home. In short, Chan's dreamed-of destination—a world in which she can be with Mae, come what may—is finally in sight, and I'll be damned if it doesn't look bright!<br /><br />Then again, it's always darkest before the dawn, and as liveable as her life has been of late, Chan hasn't forgotten how horrible it was as of the offing. She remembers, especially, losing everything after she gave so much of herself to get off the Australia:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">I was scared, living in a hovel, subsisting on whatever I could find or whatever Ziegler gave me. I had nothing. Now I can bury those memories, mostly. Those feelings. I've got something that feels like control over my life these days. I have a place in this city. A job. A role. A purpose.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">And so does Rex.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">It doesn't matter that our job is doing what they don't want others to do, or what the others won't. It's still <i>ours</i>. (pp.28-29)</blockquote>Through their heavily-augmented handler, Hoyle—who just so happens to be sleeping with Chan—she and Rex have blackmailed and intimidated their way through the worst that Washington has to offer.<br /><br />The job has hardly been a joy, obviously, but it <i>has </i>been a necessary evil. It's helped our poor pair fit in in a city that values obedience over everything else. Chan, for her part, has needed the leeway that being a good citizen has allowed her in order to find some trace of Mae, who was almost a daughter to her on the Australia. But when she and Rex are asked to outright assassinate their next target, they both know that the time has come to either poop or get off the pot...<br /><br /><a name='more'></a>That Chan is something of a celebrity, now that the book Ziegler was writing about her in <i>Long Dark Dusk</i> is done, could be as much help as it has been a hindrance, our hero realises—though&nbsp;<i>The Girl Who Fell to Earth&nbsp;</i>didn't change the world the way its author wanted:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">Serious journalists ignored it. And other readers? They couldn't believe that their ancestors could be so cruel as to condemn people to such a slow death; to send them to the stars and abandon them. People acknowledged that the ships were up there but believed them to be empty. People believed that the prisoners from Australia and South Africa were brought back to Earth before they could die. People believed that the experiment failed. People believed that Ziegler's book was a story. A lie.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">It didn't stop the book from selling though. (p.34)</blockquote>And just like that, said central character has a plan: to use her almost famous status to locate the last missing piece of the puzzle, meaning Mae. Hoyle, however, isn't likely to take kindly to Chan's choice to betray him by breaking cover—and he has the infrastucture of an entire city at his fingertips.<br /><br />But remember: Chan has Rex. And readers? Rex is tremendous; certainly the standout character of <i>Dark Made Dawn</i>, not least because her arc—from ghastly gang-banger at the beginning of the trilogy to faithful friend in this last act—has been so dramatic. Through thick and through thin, she's stayed true to herself, too: she might now be fighting for what's right rather than terrorising to keep territory, but she's still the strong, silent type who speaks in actions as opposed to words.<br /><br />The words she leaves to Chan, largely, and bolstered as she's been by her development in book two of the trilogy, she's no slouch as a character either. That said, there aren't a great many more places for her to go, and until the very end of <i>Dark Made Dawn</i>, when she's called upon to make another awful choice, she can come across as somewhat monotonous.<br /><br />Similarly, the city. As in <i>Long Dark Dusk</i>, Washington feels unfortunately flat. Although our heroes spend most of their time here, and so indeed do we, it exists only in broad strokes: there's a poor neighbourhood down by the docks, and then there's the rest of it, which is sumptuous, unceasingly surveilled... and that's about that. At a point in <i>Dark Made Dawn</i>,&nbsp;Chan and company visit new New York, and although they're only there briefly,&nbsp;its colour-coded bridges and sea-straddling skyscrapers make it markedly more memorable than the city that's been this series' primary setting.<br /><br />That said, this is the end, my friends, and endings aren't especially invested in questions of setting and such. Between bringing events to a head, answering the overarching narrative and serving the concerns of characters, endings already have more than enough to do, and <i>Dark Made Dawn </i>does those things. It completes the circle of The Australia Trilogy in a very satisfying fashion, and if the note it closes isn't entirely earned, the finale is no less fitting for that fact.<br /><br />Like it has been for Chan, it's been a long road for readers of this series, but even if our hero has had a hellish experience, the journey J. P. Smythe has taken us on—what with its fists and twists and burns and turns—has been altogether awesome.<br /><br /></div></div></div><div><div style="text-align: center;">***</div></div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /><b>Dark Made Dawn</b><br />by J. P. Smythe<br /><br />UK Publication: October 2016, Hodder<br /><br />Buy this book from<br /><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dark-Made-Dawn-Australia-Trilogy/dp/1444796399/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1474885176&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=dark+made+dawn+smythe&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-21&amp;linkId=90b92da561e96644a90a94c218f7b01f" target="_blank">Amazon.co.uk</a>&nbsp;/&nbsp;<a href="http://www.bookdepository.com/book/9781444796391/?a_aid=scotspec" target="_blank">The Book Depository</a><br /><br />Or get&nbsp;<a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dark-Made-Dawn-Australia-Trilogy-ebook/dp/B01ARXVTJK/ref=as_li_ss_tl?_encoding=UTF8&amp;qid=1474885176&amp;sr=8-1&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-21&amp;linkId=5ef1541d07dd4005d6b9868b408a6d03" target="_blank">the Kindle edition</a><br /><i><br /></i><i>Recommended and Related Reading</i><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Way-Down-Dark-Australia-Trilogy/dp/144479633X/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1474971828&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=way+down+dark&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-21&amp;linkId=ae3146617bac6bb7df6da84c207b8eb8" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_rU7RkWAv2g/V-j2tW2UpJI/AAAAAAAAPNs/3N0LEQmFCuoGJKCoFVRvBwap0XjTOUM4ACLcB/s200/waydowndark-pb.jpg" width="130" /></a><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Revenger-Alastair-Reynolds/dp/0575090537/ref=as_li_ss_tl?_encoding=UTF8&amp;qid=&amp;sr=&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-21&amp;linkId=054d631c1a9a54f5b70a5df6d427fbc7" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Lg21zuHyc7c/V-pJOlOJvSI/AAAAAAAAPOY/KHRpYWydO9gBHnSMXEZ1S9ENSkBkrPbeQCLcB/s200/revenger-uk.jpg" width="131" /></a><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Morning-Star-Red-Rising-Trilogy/dp/1444759078/ref=as_li_ss_tl?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1474971906&amp;sr=1-2&amp;keywords=golden+sun&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-21&amp;linkId=292b9ecf439f5654eb049edf1c85075e" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Rd_rX1oI8mg/V-pJQaZNAWI/AAAAAAAAPOc/DsLVaBxggZE9xcp0NCRROnxR4cQYIySiACLcB/s200/morningstar.jpg" width="131" /></a></div></div>http://scotspec.blogspot.com/2016/10/book-review-dark-made-dawn-by-j-p-smythe.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Niall Alexander)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6498739347909985243.post-3842886228301852732Thu, 13 Oct 2016 13:00:00 +00002016-10-13T14:00:41.244+01:00A City Dreamingbook reviewDaniel PolanskymagicNew Yorkurban fantasyBook Review | A City Dreaming by Daniel Polansky<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-qqKV6sgG3Xc/V-kA7pmg1FI/AAAAAAAAPN8/wHWJraoMDi4f38ymeViSE9HNMFlV9_TzQCLcB/s1600/acitydreaming-uk.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-qqKV6sgG3Xc/V-kA7pmg1FI/AAAAAAAAPN8/wHWJraoMDi4f38ymeViSE9HNMFlV9_TzQCLcB/s320/acitydreaming-uk.jpg" width="212" /></a><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-J12KpLRRJMM/V-kA7o95rVI/AAAAAAAAPOA/ZMTLBVW19qslDdjwl9--X_TmWaPZn2mhQCLcB/s1600/acitydreaming-us.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-J12KpLRRJMM/V-kA7o95rVI/AAAAAAAAPOA/ZMTLBVW19qslDdjwl9--X_TmWaPZn2mhQCLcB/s320/acitydreaming-us.jpg" width="213" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>M is a drifter with a sharp tongue, few scruples, and limited magical ability, who would prefer drinking artisanal beer to involving himself in the politics of the city. Alas, in the infinite nexus of the universe which is New York, trouble is a hard thing to avoid, and now a rivalry between the city's two queens threatens to make the Big Apple go the way of Atlantis. To stop it, M will have to call in every favor, waste every charm, and blow every spell he's ever acquired - he might even have to get out of bed before noon.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>Enter a world of wall street wolves, slumming scenesters, desperate artists, drug-induced divinities, pocket steam-punk universes, and hipster zombies. Because the city never sleeps, but is always dreaming.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>***</i></div><div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />He gave grimdark fantasy a knee in the rear with the wickedly witty Low Town trilogy. He tackled epic fantasy to tremendous effect across <i>Those Above </i>and <i>Those Below</i>. Now, as he turns his attention to urban fantasy by way of his brilliantly bold new book, one wonders: can Daniel Polansky no wrong?<br /><br />That remains to be seen, I suppose, but he's certainly never done anything as resoundingly right as&nbsp;<i>A City Dreaming</i>. An assemblage of loosely-connected vignettes as opposed to a work of longform fiction—although it's also that, at the last—<i>A City Dreaming </i>takes some getting into, but once you're in, it's a win-win. Hand on heart, I haven't read anything like it in my life.<br /><br />The first couple of chapters serve to introduce M, a rogueish reprobate who straddles "the line between curmudgeonly cute and outright prickish" (p.246) and can do magic, as it happens. "It would help if you did not think of it as magic," however, as our "incandescently arrogant" (p.149) narrator notes:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">M had certainly long since ceased to do so. He thought of it as being in good with the Management, like a regular at a neighborhood bar. You come to a place long enough, talk up the chick behind the counter, after a while she'll look the other way if you have a smoke inside, let you run up your tab, maybe even send over some free nuts on occasion. Magic was like that, except the bar was existence and the laws being bent regarded thermodynamics and weak nuclear force. (p.1)</blockquote>When M is finally called upon to pay the tab that he's run up (and up and up) in the pub that is the entirety of Paris, he decides, after some serious soul-searching over several such snacks, that "it might be time to toddle off" (p.6) to his old stomping ground in the States, because he believes he's been gone for long enough that the many enemies he made there have probably forgotten him.<br /><br />He's wrong on that count, of course. But M's enemies aren't his most immediate problem. On the contrary, his most immediate problem, as he sees it, is how popular he seems to be.<br /><br /><a name='more'></a>Pretty much from the moment he's home, "M kept running into people he hadn't seen in a long time, kept getting pulled into bars, parties, misadventures, tragedies." (p.157) Early on, he and his mates rides a train through time and space. Later, he's invited to a bit of a shindig where he takes a designer drug that gives him a small god in his eyeball.<br /><br /><i>A City Dreaming </i>isn't in its moment-to-moment much less madcap when M manages, by hook or by crook, to keep his own company. At one point, he goes on a long walk and gets lost in a pocket universe of sorts. On another occasion he decides to do something about the unstoppable spread of artisanal coffee shops in his neighbourhood, only to find a bean-loving demon behind the scenes. In short, nothing—not even the nods towards an overarching narrative with which Polansky peppers these episodes—nothing, but nothing, stops the shenanigans.<br /><br />"It was strange how quickly a person grew used to this sort of thing, falling into a comfortable armistice with the impossible." (p.46) Strange, but true. Granted, it's hard to get a handle on <i>A City Dreaming</i> if you go into it expecting a story told in the standard mold, but sometimes, less is more—and in this instance, it is. Sometimes, the incremental accretion of narrative, as if by accident, adds up to an understanding of events and their respective contexts that makes the complete picture clearer—as it does here.<br /><br />That isn't to say the several threads that wend their way through <i>A City Dreaming </i>are some great shakes. If you squint at the thing from the right angle, though, they're there. M finally falls out of favour with the Management, though he can't imagine "why those cosmic forces, normally so inclined to look with favour upon his foolishness, had decided to avert their eyes from him." (p.105) Not unrelatedly, I dare say, he ends up with an apprentice, which is the last thing a fly-by-night fella like M is interested in. Also, as our man avers:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">"I'm starting to think I might have gotten finagled into tipping the balance of power between the two great potentates of New York City, whose continued stalemate is the only thing that keeps the place remotely tolerable." (p.140)</blockquote>So there's that. That, and the continued unconsciousness of the world turtle Manhattan Island sits on the back of. Tip of the hat to Terry Pratchett!<br /><br />But just as it says on the tin, this is the story of a city, as much if not more than it is the story of a man spending time in said. A city dreaming, indeed—although M, and to a greater or lesser extent his friends and enemies, are wide awake for the duration. And <i>A City Dreaming</i>'s central character isn't just <i>a </i>city, either, it's "<i>the&nbsp;</i>city," (p.158) namely New York:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">Consider: say an alien being, some unworldy creature with origins in distant nebula—superintelligent lichen or a giant floating amoeba or even the ubiquitous gray—were to appear on Earth desirous of seeing what we here on terra firma call a city. Where would you take him? To smoky London? To once-divided Berlin? To Tokyo and its spires? Of course not. You would buy him a ticket to Penn Station and apologise for how ugly it is, and afterward you would step out into Midtown and you would tell him that this is what man&nbsp;<i>is</i>, for better or worse.&nbsp;(p.158)</blockquote>For better or worse—better, from my perspective—<i>A City Dreaming </i>is as debauched as it is divine and as drug-addled as it is dreamy. It's quite simply the best thing Daniel Polansky has ever written—and he's already written some brilliant things. In retrospect, it reads like the book he was born to write, and if he never writes another, well, that'd be sad, but on the back of this most marvelous medicine, I'd manage.&nbsp;<i>A City Dreaming&nbsp;</i>really is that remarkable.<br /><br /></div></div></div><div><div style="text-align: center;">***</div></div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /><b>A City Dreaming</b><br />by Daniel Polansky<br /><br />UK Publication: October 2016, Hodder<br />US Publication: October 2016, Regan Arts<br /><br />Buy this book from<br /><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/City-Dreaming-Daniel-Polansky/dp/1473634253/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1474887745&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=A+City+Dreaming+polansky&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-21&amp;linkId=4a293af71ecf9a506ebabb1334dfec37" target="_blank">Amazon.co.uk</a>&nbsp;/&nbsp;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/City-Dreaming-Novel-Daniel-Polansky/dp/1682450384/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1474887761&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=A+City+Dreaming+polansky&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-20&amp;linkId=e658b49c3ca850d84352a809811b377f" target="_blank">Amazon.com</a><br /><a href="http://www.bookdepository.com/book/9781473634268/?a_aid=scotspec" target="_blank">The Book Depository</a><br /><br />Or get&nbsp;<a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/City-Dreaming-Daniel-Polansky-ebook/dp/B01D8ZE2K2/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1474887745&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=A+City+Dreaming+polansky&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-21&amp;linkId=47122a4f7b5624039c90f3491c75faa5" target="_blank">the Kindle edition</a><br /><i><br /></i><i>Recommended and Related Reading</i><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Those-Above-Empty-Throne-Book/dp/1444779915/ref=as_li_ss_tl?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1474972277&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=daniel+polansky&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-21&amp;linkId=447c1b5d91c5aa61003b4a8a516b7d29" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-E9Cpq5MF6qE/V-pK2yYR_rI/AAAAAAAAPOk/LAcoHSYTgbEdqyWzRktULsGmRbxElCM6wCLcB/s200/thoseabove-pb.jpg" width="130" /></a><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Central-Station-Lavie-Tidhar/dp/1616962143/ref=as_li_ss_tl?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1474972321&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=central+station&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-21&amp;linkId=41959cca1c180731621425666a153503" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-FVUGMOWbwpQ/V-pK5nG9GNI/AAAAAAAAPOs/Y86y4qawx3sesfGHuzI-fjJVfcVaeaG0gCLcB/s200/centralstation.jpg" width="129" /></a><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/City-China-Mi%C3%A9ville/dp/033053419X/ref=as_li_ss_tl?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1474972294&amp;sr=1-3&amp;keywords=china+mieville&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-21&amp;linkId=e88ee5d018e60223410da119cc6eb76e" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-zAA8o-vOJsA/V-pK4IRwy2I/AAAAAAAAPOo/PVHNq15nQ7QJo803IsVJWhh0oirmbeY1gCLcB/s200/thecityandthecity-new.jpg" width="130" /></a></div></div>http://scotspec.blogspot.com/2016/10/book-review-city-dreaming-by-daniel.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Niall Alexander)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6498739347909985243.post-6171423741688557183Mon, 10 Oct 2016 13:00:00 +00002016-10-10T14:00:26.773+01:00book reviewBrian Evensonfound fictionhorroridentitynovellassfThe Warrenunreliable narratorsBook Review | The Warren by Brian Evenson<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-H4SDA-7-wqU/V5c26nZC7NI/AAAAAAAAPHw/-A1wtjDL2WQC8PC1rHnNkNZ3Dip9AEdwQCLcB/s1600/warren.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-H4SDA-7-wqU/V5c26nZC7NI/AAAAAAAAPHw/-A1wtjDL2WQC8PC1rHnNkNZ3Dip9AEdwQCLcB/s400/warren.jpg" width="250" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>X doesn't have a name. He thought he had one or many but that might be the result of the failing memories of the personalities imprinted within him. Or maybe he really is called X.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>He's also not as human as he believes himself to be.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>But when he discovers the existence of another—above ground, outside the protection of the Warren—X must learn what it means to be human, or face the destruction of their two species.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>***</i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><br /></i></div><div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>Area X </i>meets Duncan Jones' first and finest movie <i>Moon </i>in a marvellously mystifying novella that wants to know what it means to be human in a world where people can be constructed like sculptures shaped from clay.<br /><br />X is one such person; the last in a line of such people, even, although almost all of his predecessors, helpfully arranged alphabetically, persist within him. "X was the most recent, the closest to the surface; there was nobody beyond him. And yet he was folded in on himself, damaged." (p.55) Being more metaphysical than physiological, that damage is on display from word one of <i>The Warren</i>, which purports to be a record—though it is far from reliable—of X's pitiable existence:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">I am writing on paper because I have seen the way that sectors of the monitor and other recording devices can become corrupted and whole selves, as a result, are lost. I am trying to leave behind a record that will survive. Apparently, judging from the passages that I do not remember but which are nonetheless written, I am not the only part of me writing this. (p.18)</blockquote>Never mind for the moment our protagonist's matter of fact manner. Clearly, "something is quite wrong," (p.62) and that something has to do with the many competing personalities X carries, at least one of which is unwilling to lie back and think of Britain. "I am working against myself," it dawns on X on the day when he wakes halfway out of the Warren. "There are parts of me ready to betray me, and I no longer have clear control over them, particularly when I sleep." (p.38)<br /><br /><a name='more'></a>X is unsettled in another sense as well. The raw materials he could make use of to manufacture another man—a Y, I'd imagine—have run out, meaning that unless X determines an alternative, he will be the last living thing. So it is that X soon suits up and leaves the relative safety of the only home he's ever known, such as it is, to scour the planet's scorched surface for more viable matter.<br /><br />What he's looking for he finds, kind of, when he happens upon a chamber that houses another human—a human like but unlike X, "not constructed but rather procreated through the fertilisation of an ovum by a sperm and its subsequent development in a womb." (p.26) Horak's story, when it's told, has our central character questioning his every assumption about himself, and the other beings in his body clamouring for control over their host.<br /><br />What X is, for him to have so many selves, is just one of <i>The Warren</i>'s many mysteries. When he is, why he is, where he is, what happened to everyone else—these questions and more come up over its concise and impeccably controlled course. Easy answers are not the order of the day, I'm afraid, which will make this well-judged work of fiction frustrating for some, but a few solutions are alluded to, and they are singularly satisfying.<br /><br />Discovery for us as readers is piecemeal and unpredictable, just as it is for X himself. What revelations there are are conveyed in what appears to be a haphazard manner, but <i>The Warren</i>'s broken story mirrors the broken being at its breast brilliantly, revealing fragments of&nbsp;fantastical&nbsp;narrative in the same breath as expanding our understanding of X as a character:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">Since I learned most things in a way that I have come to feel would not be considered normal for those who might read this record, my sense of balance and order is sometimes far from perfect. At times, I become confused about the order in which things should be told. Parts of me know things that other parts do not, and sometimes I both know a thing and do not know it, or part of me knows something is true and another part knows it is not true, and there is nothing to allow me to negotiate between the two. The monitor can help if I ask the right questions, but in many circumstances it just adds another layer of confusion so that whatever is being choked or stifled is even more so. (pp.11-12)</blockquote><div>In addition to this, and the unreliable nature of our narrator, there is a powerful sense of strangeness at play in these proceedings—a notion that nothing is as it seems that grows and grows as we pile assumption on top of assumption, all the while aware of the mistake we're making. "The feeling that you, or rather I, are at once dreaming and remembering and simultaneously doing something as if for the first time" (p.20) is just as decentering as it sounds. And "that terrible rapid construction of the world around you, but not as a new world; instead, as a world already known, already seen," (pp.20-21) is practically peerless here.</div><div><br /></div><div>I've had my ups and downs with Brian Evenson's work over the years, particularly with his tiresome tie-ins, but <i>The Warren </i>has all the intensity and intelligence of his tremendous 2009 novel&nbsp;<i>Last Days</i>. It may well be the best thing he's written since.</div><br /></div></div></div><div><div style="text-align: center;">***</div></div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /><b>The Warren</b><br />by Brian Evenson<br /><br />US Publication:<br />September 2016, Tor<br /><br />Buy this book from<br /><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Warren-Brian-Evenson/dp/0765393158/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1469527416&amp;sr=8-5&amp;keywords=brian+evenson&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-21&amp;linkId=2ddc8fbf4bfc23a4f4b240fba69a90d4" target="_blank">Amazon.co.uk</a>&nbsp;/&nbsp;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Warren-Brian-Evenson/dp/0765393158/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1469528105&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=brian+evenson+warren&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-20&amp;linkId=3eb702db1b9ffa6bf40758833d0d3480" target="_blank">Amazon.com</a><br /><a href="http://www.bookdepository.com/book/9780765393159/?a_aid=scotspec" target="_blank">The Book Depository</a><br /><br />Or get <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Warren-Brian-Evenson-ebook/dp/B01FQQ47QA/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1469527416&amp;sr=8-5&amp;keywords=brian+evenson&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-21&amp;linkId=e22cb1121547d3a63b614621c04bc6a4" target="_blank">the Kindle edition</a><br /><i><br /></i><i>Recommended and Related Reading</i><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Last-Days-Brian-Evenson/dp/1566894166/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1469527416&amp;sr=8-2&amp;keywords=brian+evenson&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-21&amp;linkId=4ca07b85f7fd5f17c39cea0aa97e24a1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gJVJILPYx4A/V5c2SVc8waI/AAAAAAAAPHo/BCdPYt5ydXcU9-Z328wLyfyQMKm7bJyZgCLcB/s200/lastdays-chp.jpg" width="133" /></a><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Area-Southern-Annihilation-Authority-Acceptance/dp/0374261172/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1469527476&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=area+x&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-21&amp;linkId=3b46309f7db55a9d17608d1205ce2079" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-qtEND13hNls/V5c2QalRHkI/AAAAAAAAPHk/eplzfyBJ54YmDpnjSJCGy4Y-5D7rivVMwCLcB/s200/areax.jpg" width="150" /></a><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Three-Moments-Explosion-China-Mi%C3%A9ville/dp/0230770177/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;dpID=51+7FCi7J+L&amp;dpSrc=sims&amp;preST=_AC_UL160_SR105,160_&amp;psc=1&amp;refRID=ZQ201ZS9EVC6PNYF5PTW&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-21&amp;linkId=daa2a9be0aad8ade273039b484ae421a" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Qw6oaZnQvxY/V5c2PGYv3MI/AAAAAAAAPHg/55XTgbjWtrAOrWN5v_kdxoeDf7A-U-rhQCLcB/s200/threemoments.jpg" width="126" /></a></div></div>http://scotspec.blogspot.com/2016/10/book-review-warren-by-brian-evenson.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Niall Alexander)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6498739347909985243.post-3096650206391112452Tue, 04 Oct 2016 13:00:00 +00002016-10-04T14:00:33.213+01:00alien invasionbook reviewCixin LiuDeath's EndKen Liusfspace operasurvivalThe Three-Body Problemtime traveltranslationsBook Review | Death's End by Cixin Liu<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-WOnwKX1ga1A/V9E3YMujNOI/AAAAAAAAPLo/JTuvOxLgpZQG1FYEljWua32dClWutPT8wCLcB/s1600/deathsend-uk.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-WOnwKX1ga1A/V9E3YMujNOI/AAAAAAAAPLo/JTuvOxLgpZQG1FYEljWua32dClWutPT8wCLcB/s400/deathsend-uk.jpg" width="252" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>Half a century after the Doomsday Battle, the uneasy balance of Dark Forest Deterrence keeps the Trisolaran invaders at bay. Earth enjoys unprecedented prosperity due to the infusion of Trisolaran knowledge. With human science advancing and the Trisolarans adopting Earth culture, it seems that the two civilizations can co-exist peacefully as equals without the terrible threat of mutually assured annihilation. But peace has also made humanity complacent.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>Cheng Xin, an aerospace engineer from the 21st century, awakens from hiber­nation in this new age. She brings knowledge of a long-forgotten program dating from the start of the Trisolar Crisis, and her presence may upset the delicate balance between two worlds. Will humanity reach for the stars or die in its cradle?</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: center;"><i>***</i></div></div><div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />The translation and publication of Cixin Liu's Three-Body books has been a singular highlight of the science fiction scene in recent years. The Hugo Award-winning opening salvo of said saga took in physics, farming, philosophy and first contact, and that was just for starters. The world was wondrous, the science startling, and although the author's choice of "a man named 'humanity'" as that narrative's central character led to a slight lack of life,&nbsp;<i>The Three-Body Problem </i><a href="http://www.tor.com/2014/11/07/book-review-the-three-body-problem-cixin-liu/" target="_blank">promised profundity</a>.<br /><br />A year later,&nbsp;<i>The Dark Forest&nbsp;</i>delivered. Bolstered by "a complex protagonist, an engrossing, high-stakes story and a truly transcendent setting, <i>The Dark Forest </i>[was] by every measure a better book" than <i>The Three-Body Problem</i>. Not only did it account for its predecessor's every oversight, it also embiggened the Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy brilliantly and explored a series of ideas that&nbsp;astonished even seasoned science fiction readers.<br /><br />But "no banquet was eternal. Everything had an end. Everything." (p.27) And when something you care about does approach that point, all you can do is hope it ends well.<br /><br /><i>Death's End </i>does.<br /><br /><a name='more'></a>In the first, it's as expansive a narrative as any I've ever read. Most books, at bottom, are brief histories of human beings, but&nbsp;<i>Death's End</i> is different. It's a history of the whole of humanity in the whole of the galaxy that begins, albeit briefly, in 1453, continues concurrently with the events of <i>The Three-Body Problem </i>and <i>The Dark Forest</i>, before concluding a matter of millions of years later. All told, the sweep of the story Cixin Liu is determined to depict is absolutely staggering.<br /><div><br /></div>For all that, though, <i>Death's End </i>has a single character at its core rather than the vast casts this series' readers have had to keep track of in the past. Cheng Xin is a fiercely intelligent if especially sensitive aerospace engineer from the early twenty-first century—the time of the Trisolar Crisis, which period of panic followed the catastrophic first contact chronicled in <i>The Three-Body Problem</i>:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">The Trisolar Crisis' impact on society was far deeper than people had imagined at first. [...] In terms of biology, it was equivalent to the moment when the ancestors of mammals climbed from the ocean onto land; in terms of religion, it was akin to when Adam and Eve were banished from Eden; in terms of history and sociology... there are no suitable analogies, even imperfect ones. Compared to the Trisolar Crisis, everything heretofore experienced by human civilisation was nothing. The Crisis shook the very foundation of culture, politics, religion, and economics. (p.43)</blockquote>To wit, with a common enemy coming, the people of planet Earth essentially come together and put several survival stratagems into action. The Wallfacers of <i>The Dark Forest </i>were one; the Staircase Project, Cheng Xin's plan to embed a spy in the Trisolaran ranks—basically by sending a frozen brain into space—is another. It's desperate, yes, but times like these call for measures like those.<br /><br />Sadly, the Staircase Project is a failure from the first, or at least seems to be, because the brain—of one of our attractive protagonist's many admirers, as it happens—is blown off course before it reaches the needed speed. That mishap means the likelihood of the Trisolaran fleet even finding it is low; negligible enough that when Cheng Xin first enters cryogenic suspension, ostensibly to await the next step of the Staircase, it's really only to make the people that have pinned their hopes on her happy.<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">In the eyes of historians, the Staircase Project was a typical result of the ill-thought-out impulsiveness that marked the beginning of the Crisis Era, a hastily conducted, poorly planned adventure. In addition to the complete failure to accomplish its objectives, it left nothing of a technological value. [...] No one could have predicted that nearly three centuries later, the Staircase Project would bring a ray of hope to an Earth mired in despair. (p.290)</blockquote>And Cheng Xin is there to see it. To feel it, even. But so much has changed by the date she's awakened! Humanity has entered a period known as the Deterrence Era. Following the state of stalemate established by the Wallfacers in <i>The Dark Forest</i>, the Trisolarans have stopped advancing.<br /><br />Yet there are other threats, because "the universe&nbsp;contains multitudes. You can find any kind of 'people' and world. There are idealists like the Zero-Homers, pacifists, philanthropists, and even civilisations dedicated only to art and beauty. But they're not the mainstream; they cannot change the direction of the universe." (p.563) Where, then, is the universe headed? Why, where we all are: towards "the only lighthouse that is always lit. No matter where you sail, ultimately, you must turn toward it. Everything fades [...] but Death endures." (p.379)<br /><br />But what if it didn't? What if the life of the individual, and likewise the life of the universe, could be prolonged to the point that death itself ended? "If so, those who chose hibernation"—people like Cheng Xin—"were taking the first steps on the staircase to life everlasting. For the first time in history, Death itself was no longer fair. The consequences were unimaginable." (p.73)<br /><br />You don't get to know about those, though. Not because I won't tell you, but because <i>Death's End </i>is so stupidly full of electrifying ideas like these that a good many of them are roundly erased mere pages after they've been raised. Before you know it the Deterrence Era is over and the Broadcast Era begun, but the Broadcast Era is soon superseded by the Bunker Era, the Bunker Era by the Galaxy Era and the Galaxy Era by the age of the Black Domain.<br /><br />There's enough&nbsp;<i>stuff&nbsp;</i>in this one novel to fill trilogies, and a lot of it lands; I got chills during an abstract chat with a four-dimensional entity, and I thrilled when I learned of the escape of a certain spaceship. That said, some of <i>Death's End</i>'s overabundance of substance rather drags. Cheng Xin, for instance. She acts as the narrative's anchor, allowing readers to acclimatise to each new Age just as she has to on every occasion she's awakened from hibernation. Alas, she also has an anchor's personality, which is to say, you know... none. She's pretty and she's sensitive and, needless to note, she's a she, yet in every other respect she resembles the bland "man named 'humanity'" from&nbsp;<i>The Three-Body Problem&nbsp;</i>more closely than&nbsp;<i>The Dark Forest</i>'s interestingly conflicted curmudgeon of a central character.<br /><br />Ultimately, it's the ideas Cixin Liu&nbsp;tends to in&nbsp;<i>Death's End&nbsp;</i>that are going to grab you, rather than its protagonist. It's the incredible ambition of this book that you're going to write home about, as opposed to its fleeting focus on the minor moments. And that's... disappointing, I dare say. But it's nowhere near a deal-breaker. I mean, if you want to tell the story of the whole of humanity in the whole of the galaxy, as Cixin Liu attempts to, then the human beings at the heart of such a vast narrative are fated to feel frivolous.<br /><br /><i>Death's End </i>bites off more than it can chew, to be sure, and absent the emotional underpinnings of <i>The Dark Forest</i>, it's more like <i>The Three-Body Problem </i>than the marvellous middle volume of the Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy, which somehow managed that balancing act. But <a href="http://www.tor.com/2015/08/11/hell-is-other-people-the-dark-forest-by-cixin-liu/" target="_blank">I've said it before</a> and I'll say it again, here at the end: <i>The Three-Body Problem </i>was awesome. <i>Death's End </i>is in every sense at least as&nbsp;immense.<br /><div><br /></div></div></div></div><div><div style="text-align: center;">***</div></div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /><b>Death's End</b><br />by Cixin Liu<br /><br />UK Publication: September 2016, Head of Zeus<br />US Publication: September 2016, Tor<br /><br />Buy this book from<br /><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Deaths-End-Three-Body-Problem-Cixin/dp/1784971634/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1473328848&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=cixin+liu+death%27s+end&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-21&amp;linkId=7b700580943e2692535877ece37347e5" target="_blank">Amazon.co.uk</a>&nbsp;/&nbsp;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Deaths-End-Remembrance-Earths-Past/dp/0765377101/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1473328858&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=cixin+liu+death%27s+end&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-20&amp;linkId=c27eb77a735bade8cacb4a97050ae174" target="_blank">Amazon.com</a><br /><a href="http://www.bookdepository.com/book/9781784971649/?a_aid=scotspec" target="_blank">The Book Depository</a><br /><br />Or get&nbsp;<a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Deaths-End-Three-Body-Problem-Book-ebook/dp/B016AWGJBK/ref=as_li_ss_tl?_encoding=UTF8&amp;qid=1473328848&amp;sr=8-1&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-21&amp;linkId=69c4197a4c3545a1f20fec1f141fb804" target="_blank">the Kindle edition</a><br /><i><br /></i><i>Recommended and Related Reading</i><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Three-Body-Problem-Cixin-Liu/dp/178497157X/ref=as_li_ss_tl?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1473329188&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=three+body&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-21&amp;linkId=9d4543691c8948de20ab0705fdfb13e2" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hpTxVPGs-Tk/V9E3kqDQ6hI/AAAAAAAAPL4/1oMIOtpXSw4ThAqAiUeGl8y3sjgNps1lwCLcB/s200/threebodyproblem-pb.jpg" width="130" /></a><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Grace-Kings-Dandelion-Dynasty/dp/1784973238/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1473329156&amp;sr=8-3&amp;keywords=ken+liu&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-21&amp;linkId=d0197b827c6c242d6bca2a23dd923324" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-WRpNQBgoTFo/V9E4dZFpShI/AAAAAAAAPME/JdQoF_Wk8gwDMR7LggNKTl48Bm7Eg_NsQCLcB/s200/graceofkings-uk.jpg" width="130" /></a><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Seveneves-Neal-Stephenson/dp/0008132542/ref=as_li_ss_tl?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1473329198&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=seveneves&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-21&amp;linkId=d913e0be01e4ee84128d7051f4b36687" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-IVVYyhZTZKk/V9E4cQDcpEI/AAAAAAAAPMA/7AcqnBC7UJcy8LDGBTj9FKoObMdWg-wxQCLcB/s200/seveneves-pb.jpg" width="127" /></a></div></div>http://scotspec.blogspot.com/2016/10/book-review-deaths-end-by-cixin-liu.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Niall Alexander)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6498739347909985243.post-6293783142333348091Tue, 27 Sep 2016 13:00:00 +00002016-09-27T14:00:22.597+01:00book reviewChristopher PriestDream ArchipelagomusicsfThe Gradualtime travelunexpected journeysBook Review | The Gradual by Christopher Priest<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-KyU3ovAaCQI/V77PHeJSqWI/AAAAAAAAPJk/B4DsGrDajcwj5f5gnvDJEpB7ZO04feNWgCLcB/s1600/gradual-uk.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-KyU3ovAaCQI/V77PHeJSqWI/AAAAAAAAPJk/B4DsGrDajcwj5f5gnvDJEpB7ZO04feNWgCLcB/s320/gradual-uk.jpg" width="208" /></a><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-F5aYBXjQa48/V77PHbOIxrI/AAAAAAAAPJo/DYmhhzcKgQ4wWSrrqVAkm5yDcPELxMxAwCLcB/s1600/gradual-us.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-F5aYBXjQa48/V77PHbOIxrI/AAAAAAAAPJo/DYmhhzcKgQ4wWSrrqVAkm5yDcPELxMxAwCLcB/s320/gradual-us.jpg" width="204" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>In the latest novel from one of the UK's greatest writers we return to the Dream Archipelago, a string of islands that no one can map or explain.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>Alesandro Sussken is a composer, and we see his life as he grows up in a fascist state constantly at war with another equally faceless opponent. His brother is sent off to fight; his family is destroyed by grief. Occasionally Alesandro catches glimpses of islands in the far distance from the shore, and they feed into his music—music for which he is feted.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>But all knowledge of the other islands is forbidden by the junta, until he is unexpectedly sent on a cultural tour. And what he discovers on his journey will change his perceptions of his country, his music and the ways of the islands themselves.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>Playing with the lot of the creative mind, the rigours of living under war and the nature of time itself, this is Christopher Priest at his absolute best</i>.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>***</i></div><div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />Pro tip, folks: never, ever, <i>ever</i> ask artists where they get their ideas from. It's not a trade secret or anything so sensational—it's just a silly question in the eyes of the aforementioned, and at best, silly questions beget silly answers, such as the bit about the&nbsp;Bognor Regis-based ideas dealer Neil Gaiman used to use. The fact of the matter is that art is inherently personal, and people, whatever their superficial similarities, are completely unique, so what inspires one person in one way isn't likely to inspire another, and if it does, it'll be differently.<br /><br />That's just one of the lessons the eventually-fêted composer Alesandro Sussken learns in <i>The Gradual</i>: a dreamlike diatribe on the source of song and scene and story and so on, arranged, somewhat like a literary symphony, around one man's lifelong journey through the tides of time.<br /><br />Like <i>The Islanders </i>and <i>The Adjacent </i>and a bunch of other&nbsp;Christopher Priest books before it, <i>The Gradual </i>takes place in the Dream Archipelago, which is to say "the largest geographical feature in the world, comprising literally millions of islands." The Susskens—a family of musicians, mostly—live on Glaund, which is at war with Faiandland, and has been for as long as anyone can remember, for reasons no one can rightly recall. This sort of thing is not uncommon in the Dream Archipelago, so Alesandro doesn't take it too personally... that is, until his older brother&nbsp;Jacj is enlisted.<br /><br />Years pass. Indeed, decades do:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">Jacj's absence was eternally in the background of everything I did. Whatever had happened to him gave me feelings of dread, misery, horror, helplessness, but you cannot work up these emotions every day, every hour. I feared for him, was terrified of the news that I felt would come inevitably: he was dead, he had gone missing in action, he was horrifically wounded, he had deserted and been shot by officers. All these I pondered.</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">Yet the time went by...&nbsp;</blockquote>As time tends to. Inevitably, Alesandro has to direct his energies elsewhere, and perhaps it's the fact that Jacj may yet be out there somewhere that leads to our hero's first fascination with the world outwith his.<br /><br /><a name='more'></a>He becomes particularly interested in the three islets visible from Glaund's shores—with Dianme, Chlam and Herrin:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">Facts about the Dream Archipelago were hard to come by and fragmentary, but I was slowly piecing together what I could. I knew, for instance, that as a citizen of the Glaund Republic I would be forever forbidden from crossing to any of those islands. Indeed, the Archipelago, which I learned circled the world, was a closed and prohibited zone. Officially, it did not exist. However, the islands were in fact there, were neutral territory in the terms of the war Glaund was involved in, and their neutrality was fiercely protected by their local laws and customs.</blockquote>Alesandro is so struck by these three islands, there but not there, that he writes some music about them: a quartet that expressed "both the quietude of the seascape as I perceived it from the shore, and the feelings of defeat induced in me by the denied existence of the islands." A lot of locals quite like it, but farther afield, there are those who come to love it—and some, such as the rock musician And Ante, love it so much that they imitate it for their own gain.<br /><br />Initially, this unsettles Alesandro, and although his frustrations fade as he ages, he never forgets, so when our increasingly well-known composer is invited to participate in a musical tour of the Dream Archipelago, he grasps the opportunity with both hands. He imagines it will give him a chance to confront And Ante,&nbsp;to find out what happened to Jacj,&nbsp;and last but not least, to see whether reality is a match for his fantasies:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">I had spent so much of my time dreaming and fantasising about the islands that I had created a plausible but totally imaginary Dream Archipelago in my mind. I had drawn music productively from these fantasies, but would the reality live up to the dream?</blockquote>Does it ever?<br /><br />By design, I dare say, <i>The Gradual </i>is more like a dream than reality. It ebbs and flows, speeds along and then suddenly slows. Things that can't happen happen—like the ten years Alesandro loses during the ten month tour that is the pivot-point of this novel—and that's that. Conflated characters float in and out of focus, talk in tongues and act as if everything they've said makes perfect sense... then, before you could possibly have cottoned on to what's going on, it's gone, and the dream's moved on.<br /><br />No surprise, then, that as a narrative, <i>The Gradual </i>doesn't satisfy in the classic fashion. It's relatively eventful at the outset, but less and less as the novel progresses. It doesn't have much momentum, and in its slow moments seems positively stodgy. It's confusing before it's clear, maddening before it's mysterious. You'll come out of the singular experience of reading it with more questions than you went in with—but read it you should, to be sure, because like a dream, baffling though it may be, it really could renew you. Intellectually, yes—the extraordinary ideas <i>The Gradual </i>explores are, as ever, brilliantly belied by the plainness of Priest's prose—but also intimately.<br /><br />Like the gradual itself—"a kind of endless, inexplicable madness" that has something to do with the tempestuous relationship between time and space in this place—Priest's latest take on the Dream Archipelago is "difficult to understand rationally [and] impossible to comprehend emotionally," but if you simply let it sit, you might just get a glimpse of it, and a glimpse is more than most artists are able to share:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">Music for me was the voice of the human spirit. It existed only in the space between the instruments that produced it and the ear that appreciated it. It was the movement and pressure of molecules of air, dispersed and replaced instantly and unceasingly. It lived nowhere in reality: gramophone records, digital discs, were merely copies of the original. The only real record that existed of music was the original score, the black pen marks on the staves, but they were cryptic, had no sound, were written in code—they had no meaning without the human spirit that could break the code, interpret the symbols. And music survived not only the lives of those who played it, but the life of the man or woman who composed it.</blockquote><i>The Gradual </i>is a great many things—exhilarating, frustrating, hypnotic, semiotic—but above all else, it's an inspiring novel about inspiration.<br /><br /></div></div></div><div><div style="text-align: center;">***</div></div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /><b>The Gradual</b><br />by Christopher Priest<br /><br />UK Publication: September 2016, Gollancz<br />US Publication: September 2016, Titan<br /><br />Buy this book from<br /><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Gradual-Christopher-Priest/dp/1473200547/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1472122531&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=The+Gradual+by+Christopher+Priest&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-21&amp;linkId=22cfd06449c0f7d82b1058f1f8bcaa1b" target="_blank">Amazon.co.uk</a>&nbsp;/&nbsp;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Gradual-Christopher-Priest/dp/1785653032/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1472122541&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=The+Gradual+by+Christopher+Priest&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-20&amp;linkId=4816267d132993bc38702b5b4069b50d" target="_blank">Amazon.com</a><br /><a href="http://www.bookdepository.com/book/9781473200548/?a_aid=scotspec" target="_blank">The Book Depository</a><br /><br />Or get&nbsp;<a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Gradual-Christopher-Priest-ebook/dp/B01D8ZZWGK/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1472122531&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=The+Gradual+by+Christopher+Priest&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-21&amp;linkId=fe669f84d7e014e6a282040e94c8a4bd" target="_blank">the Kindle edition</a><br /><i><br /></i><i>Recommended and Related Reading</i><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Adjacent-Christopher-Priest/dp/0575105380/ref=as_li_ss_tl?_encoding=UTF8&amp;qid=1472123017&amp;sr=1-12&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-21&amp;linkId=a6294988b2a6ca833e9bf21f10a3037f" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-FuqalwRSBgU/V77Q9E77TNI/AAAAAAAAPJ0/uBoONI-HS18WwSRKnTYip5nPMPl3EFbPgCLcB/s200/adjacent-pb.jpg" width="130" /></a><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Race-Nina-Allan/dp/178565036X/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1472123059&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=the+race+allan&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-21&amp;linkId=0a5207153f396882e50597185fffe3b0" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-qPwpo9m2OnI/V77Q_pMXrUI/AAAAAAAAPJ8/vv2ykEyQUnEBuocHpIrTHj03MWyXWdF7ACLcB/s200/race-new.jpg" width="127" /></a><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Chimes-Anna-Smaill/dp/1444794507/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1472123071&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=the+chimes+anna+small&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-21&amp;linkId=9dd54711c9e52a9b441449caea7df7b8" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-K5ZfEzGvIEs/V77Q-lDfM2I/AAAAAAAAPJ4/S5qPnBfq44o2q-dIiOlON8njBW0tgFx3ACLcB/s200/chimes-pb.jpg" width="130" /></a></div></div>http://scotspec.blogspot.com/2016/09/book-review-gradual-by-christopher.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Niall Alexander)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6498739347909985243.post-6949783358473882454Fri, 23 Sep 2016 13:00:00 +00002016-09-23T14:00:34.251+01:00adventureAlastair Reynoldsbook reviewpiratesRevengeRevengerrobotssfspace operaBook Review | Revenger by Alastair Reynolds<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-J4kTZrsmPwg/V8gOxSQAIpI/AAAAAAAAPKo/HJ7yGkg0E-cD-fvGR_AuZzEtJ3sbkcF5wCLcB/s1600/revenger-uk.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-J4kTZrsmPwg/V8gOxSQAIpI/AAAAAAAAPKo/HJ7yGkg0E-cD-fvGR_AuZzEtJ3sbkcF5wCLcB/s400/revenger-uk.jpg" width="262" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>The galaxy has seen great empires rise and fall. Planets have shattered and been remade. Amongst the ruins of alien civilisations, building our own from the rubble, humanity still thrives.&nbsp;</i><i>And there are vast fortunes to be made, if you know where to find them...</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>Captain Rackamore and his crew do. It's their business to find the tiny, enigmatic worlds which have been hidden away, booby-trapped, surrounded with layers of protection—and to crack them open for the ancient relics and barely-remembered technologies inside. But while they ply their risky trade with integrity, not everyone is so scrupulous.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>Adrana and Fura Ness are the newest members of Rackamore's crew, signed on to save their family from bankruptcy. Only Rackamore has enemies, and there might be more waiting for them in space than adventure and fortune: the fabled and feared Bosa Sennen in particular.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Revenger <i>is a science fiction adventure story set in the rubble of our solar system in the dark, distant future—a tale of space pirates, buried treasure and phantom weapons, of unspeakable hazards and single-minded heroism... and of vengeance.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>***</i></div><div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />Fresh off of finishing the magnificently ambitious&nbsp;<i>Poseidon's Children </i>trilogy and collaborating with fellow science fiction superstar Stephen Baxter&nbsp;on the rather marvellous <i>Medusa Chronicles</i>, Alastair Reynolds returns with a stirring story about a pair of sisters who enlist on a spaceship and set about looting the rubble of a ruined universe. Featuring dollops of derring-do and not a few space battles too, <i>Revenger </i>might be Reynold's most accessible solo effort yet, but there's no dearth of darkness in this light-looking bite of a book.<br /><br />The universe has seen better days, I dare say. Aeons on from the forging, so many civilisations have risen and fallen that the current population of the Congregation live every day as if it's apt to be their last. Piracy is inevitably prevalent, but rather than stealing from one another, most pirates plunder the remnants of ancient races from the hundreds of thousands of dead worlds distributed in the distance.<br /><br />Most pirates, but not all. Not Bosa Sennen, who has carved out a terrible legend for herself in the blood and the bodies of those unfortunate enough to have found themselves near the nightmarish&nbsp;<i>Nightjammer</i>: a sneaky little spaceship with black sails, according to the tales, the better to board you before you know it.<br /><br />Pol Rackamore&nbsp;is one of the scant few souls to have come face to face with Bosa Sennen and survived, though not without paying a perilous price: the loss of his dear daughter. He'll see her again before <i>Revenger </i>is at an end, however—as will Adrana and Arafura Ness, the&nbsp;well-to-do young women at the centre of Reynolds' enticing text.<br /><br />When said sisters, so long under the thumb of their failed businessman of a father, hear that Captain Rack is hiring, they jump at the chance to crew the <i>Monetta's Mourn</i> for a couple of months. They hope to "go out, just for a while [...] then come back home, and share what we've made." (p.15) Needless to say, dear daddy doesn't agree, but then, he can't stop them, can he?<br /><br /><br /><a name='more'></a><br />Why, he'll absolutely try! But before long, the eldest Ness is the least of Adrana and Arafura's worries, because sometimes, lightning does strike twice. Rack's craft is attacked by Bosa Sennen again, and what follows is wholesale slaughter, separating Adrana from her sister and setting Arafura, in the aftermath, on a desperately dark path:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">I can't tell you what snapped in me, only that something did. It was like that last sob you give when you know you're done crying and it's time to dry your eyes and face the world. Maybe it was Adrana, on the other side of the glass, pressing her hand against it like she needed that last touch with her living kin. Or maybe it was just some stubborn survival instinct, one that told me I'd done enough heaving and bawling and feeling sorry for myself, and now was the time to act.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">So I did. (p.116)</blockquote>And so she does. But rather than taking the wind out of the sails of this swell story, suffice it to say that Arafura sets her heart on getting her own back on Bosa Sennen: an entirely understandable plan, but just because the ends are just doesn't mean the means will be...<br /><br />Like a lot of stories arranged around retribution, <i>Revenger</i>'s&nbsp;central character is damaged by what's done to her, but what she herself does, in reaction to that action, damages her decidedly more. Her development over the length of <i>Revenger </i>is so dramatic as to be remarkable, actually. She's a bit of a goody two-shoes, as of the offing; it's rebellious Adrana who talks Arafura into the pirate life in the first. But after the massacre of <i>Monetta's Mourn</i>, our girl independently determines to do whatever she's got to, and in the process crosses a border "that couldn't ever be uncrossed," (p.246) such that soon, she holds the innocent she once was in complete contempt:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">That version of Fura [...] was someone I'd known once and then discarded, like a friend who didn't measure up. This Fura was different. This Fura was harder and scowlier and knew what needed to be done. This one could turn her back on her own dying father, or watch a blinded man whimper in pain and not give one cold cuss. This one could cut her own hand off it it helped. (ibid.)</blockquote>Just as Arafura is transformed by Reynolds' narrative, <i>Revenger </i>itself&nbsp;is one sort of story to start and another come the conclusion. The first act is all adventure: a racy, rollicking read, enjoyable to any and all, not least because of the boldfaced boundaries between the good guys and the bad. The second, a more deliberate dive into the consequences of cruelty, has an edge, yes, but <i>Revenger </i>is all edge by the end. The last and longest act is as deep and dark as the catchcloth sails of Bosa Sennen's ship: it's never less than ambiguous, and often morally abhorrent. There are still a few shoot-outs, to be sure, but just who readers should be rooting for is no longer so obvious.<br /><br />The universe all this is set against, although always engrossing in its emphatically piratical particulars,&nbsp;is similarly spread. Initially, there seems an order to it all, and a sense of elegance:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">I'd seen a sight that few others would ever know, and the moment had changed me. I'd seen the fifty million worlds of the Congregation in one glance, seen the shifting, shimmering purple twilight that was all that remained of the Old Sun's energies, after those tired old photons had fought their way to the great void of the Empty. I'd seen the glimmer of the rubble left over from the forging. (p.101)</blockquote>But of course the glimmer dims. Chaos takes the reins. The glee with which Reynolds realises what is a surprisingly substantial setting for a seemingly standalone story gives way in the late game to something unutterably guttural.<br /><br />And that's <i>Revenger </i>to a T, really. It's exhilarating one minute, excruciating the next. There's a beauty to it, but an ugliness, also. It argues that innocence can be corrupted and even evil can be redeemed, and it does so with wit and weight. I wouldn't call it wonderful—it's far too nasty for that—but it is wicked.<br /><br /></div></div></div><div><div style="text-align: center;">***</div></div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /><b>Revenger</b><br />by Alastair Reynolds<br /><br />UK Publication: September 2016, Gollancz<br />US Publication: February 2017, Orbit<br /><br />Buy this book from<br /><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Revenger-Alastair-Reynolds/dp/0575090537/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1472728305&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=Revenger+Alastair+Reynolds&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-21&amp;linkId=9634dc1ada4155c15d7a949e52157558" target="_blank">Amazon.co.uk</a>&nbsp;/&nbsp;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Revenger-Alastair-Reynolds/dp/0316555568/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1472728311&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=Revenger+Alastair+Reynolds&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-20&amp;linkId=6f7f15406a1102f25632fc83666b1869" target="_blank">Amazon.com</a><br /><a href="http://www.bookdepository.com/book/9780575090545/?a_aid=scotspec" target="_blank">The Book Depository</a><br /><br />Or get&nbsp;<a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Revenger-Alastair-Reynolds-ebook/dp/B01ERWBOTC/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1472728305&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=Revenger+Alastair+Reynolds&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-21&amp;linkId=5bde420e7662bee04add90c54409f143" target="_blank">the Kindle edition</a><br /><i><br /></i><i>Recommended and Related Reading</i><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Beyond-Aquila-Rift-Alastair-Reynolds/dp/1473219868/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1472728305&amp;sr=8-2&amp;keywords=Revenger+Alastair+Reynolds&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-21&amp;linkId=cc12f98e2706159dbccf6f98318eb931" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Y_v2Rtd1JUI/V8gOyxecBDI/AAAAAAAAPKs/MXJqHcHRIgs-gPhsn2XqVYgHdWjK0clzQCEw/s200/beyondtheaquilarift.jpg" width="130" /></a><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Retribution-Falls-Tales-Ketty-Jay/dp/0575085169/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1472728805&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=retribution+falls&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-21&amp;linkId=22d3177e61ff9af72ecd5ae67a794cb6" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qucXCYJi4l0/V8gO-7535EI/AAAAAAAAPKw/g0LiH_uNJM4e0kOQ7Mg127Mlfnd7p3okgCLcB/s200/retributionfalls.jpg" width="130" /></a><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Night-Without-Stars-Chronicle-Fallers/dp/0230769497/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;psc=1&amp;refRID=791D0YR6D5NRN1PMM7S7&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-21&amp;linkId=4701bf0ed6640f9be21527836624552f" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5Xr1K_OF2Po/V8gPdajitYI/AAAAAAAAPK4/zQ3uxci59YkApGxY-mZBFq7Z0Il6moKzACLcB/s200/nightwithoutstars.jpg" width="132" /></a></div></div>http://scotspec.blogspot.com/2016/09/book-review-revenger-by-alastair.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Niall Alexander)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6498739347909985243.post-1338739811492859006Tue, 20 Sep 2016 13:00:00 +00002016-09-20T14:00:26.768+01:00book reviewcoming of agedark fantasydetectivesfairiesfound fictionhorroridentityRamsey CampbellThe Kind FolkBook Review | The Kind Folk by Ramsey Campbell<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-FqlD3MkAb7E/V5XpDZ0d91I/AAAAAAAAPGc/UghIV_FLQh0tC0KdMMWdrRLig_LaKSIcACLcB/s1600/kindfolk-tor.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-FqlD3MkAb7E/V5XpDZ0d91I/AAAAAAAAPGc/UghIV_FLQh0tC0KdMMWdrRLig_LaKSIcACLcB/s320/kindfolk-tor.jpg" width="213" /></a><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-wYU2YJ7Lhxw/V5XpDjEzBLI/AAAAAAAAPGg/4IaGZBYu5jIqHEeAC5lMqHAfNEXkJp6GgCLcB/s1600/kindfolk-ps.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-wYU2YJ7Lhxw/V5XpDjEzBLI/AAAAAAAAPGg/4IaGZBYu5jIqHEeAC5lMqHAfNEXkJp6GgCLcB/s320/kindfolk-ps.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="227" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>Luke Arnold is a successful stage comedian who, with his partner Sophie Drew, is about to have their first child. Their life seems ideal and Luke feels that true happiness is finally within his grasp.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>This wasn't always the case. Growing up in a loving but dysfunctional family, Luke was a lonely little boy who never felt that he belonged. While his parents adored him, the whole family knew that due to a mix-up at the hospital, Luke wasn't their biological child. His parents did the best they could to make the lad feel special. But it was his beloved uncle Terence who Luke felt most close to, a man who enchanted (and frightened) the lad with tales of the other—eldritch beings, hedge folks, and other fables of Celtic myth.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>When Terence dies in a freak accident, Luke suddenly begins to learn how little he really knew his uncle. How serious was Terence about the magic in his tales? Why did he travel so widely by himself after Luke was born, and what was he looking for? Soon Luke will have to confront forces that may be older than the world in order to save his unborn child.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>***</i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><br /></i></div><div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: justify;">In everything we do, every decision we make and every action we undertake, our identities define us... yet we never <i>really </i>know who we are. We know who we were—we tell ourselves we do, to be sure—but like all memories, these recollections lose their sharpness with time, and, invariably, some of their truth, too. And while we think we know who we will be, these are projections at best; messy guesses subject to sudden and surprising changes in circumstance.<br /><br />Take Luke Arnold, the central perspective of <i>The Kind Folk </i>by Ramsey Campbell. He thought he was the only son of Maurice and Freda Arnold, but as a DNA test taken on television demonstrates, he's not; the hospital must have given the couple he calls mum and dad the wrong baby. "He still has all his memories; nothing has changed them or what he is, let alone the people who are still his parents in surely every way that counts." (p.19) Nevertheless, this sensational revelation alters Luke's perception of his past, and that, in turn, has huge ramifications on his future.<br /><br />Who, then, is the man caught in the middle?<br /><br />Not who—or what—you might imagine, actually...<br /><br />A father-to-be, in the first, because Luke's wife, the singer/songwriter Sophie Drew, is expecting. And although the doctors at the hospital give clean bills of health to&nbsp;both of the prospective parents, they take Luke to one side to say that it would be "in the interest of your child to discover what you can about your origins." (p.73) Origins that, try as he might to divine them in the subsequent months, don't seem to be entirely natural in nature.<br /><br />It just so happens he already has an inkling as to where else he could conceivably have come from, because as a boy, he was haunted by bad dreams, imaginary companions and a compulsion to twist the fingers of his hands into shapes seen by some as satanic. The child psychologist little Luke saw all those years ago thought this was the fault of Luke's beloved uncle, Terence, and his tales of the Kind Folk.<br /><br /><a name='more'></a>"That was what people used to call the fairies to try and stop them getting up to anything too wicked, the Kind Folk," (p.90) and for Terence, they were something of an obsession—an obsession Luke comes to believe might hold the key to his own otherwise inexplicable origins when his dear uncle dies and he inherits a journal of strange stories and seemingly nonsensical notes. These allude to "the legend of the changeling—an inhuman or demonic baby substituted for a human one soon after birth," (p.120) and as Luke retraces Terence's travels, he becomes increasingly gripped by the fear that he is just such a creature.<br /><br />Silly as I'm sure some of this sounds in synopsis, in Ramsey Campbell's hands, for several reasons, it's all too easy to believe—not least because Luke's character is so tied to trickery and layered, latterly, in lots of little lies. You see, having displayed, from an early age, an uncanny ability to mimic, he's found some small measure of celebrity in his middle age as an impressionist. This, incidentally, is how he's able to visit the many and various locations Terence mentioned in his journal without arousing Sophie's suspicions: Luke tells her he's touring. But between stand-up spots in all the local hotspots, he's visiting places like Steppingstone Lane and Compass Meadow, where "it feels as though his childhood problem has returned—as though that mental state is about to define itself at last." (p.109)<br /><br />These are places where the borders between worlds have been worn so thin, he thinks, that he might stand a chance of speaking to the beings he's beginning to believe in. Luke's burgeoning beliefs are reinforced by the reading he does in his down-time, in the course of which he learns that changelings "learned to pass for human by imitating traits they observed, a camouflage as innate as the chameleon's. Many displayed their talent for mimicry, while quite a few gained fame with it." (p.120) Fame such as he has gained, I dare say, making for a nominally unreliable narrator.<br /><br />This last only adds to the unsettling sense of uncertainty that Campbell yokes to <i>The Kind Folk</i>—a sense which is evident in even the most mundane moments of the story. Here, our hero is doing nothing more remarkable than driving out of a private garden, and yet everything—note the set dressing especially—is alive in some capacity, and, yes, aggressive:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">The lamp at the end of the drive lets Luke pass unnoticed and then flares up to celebrate his departure. The blurred restless shadows of the trees mop at his silhouette as if they've resolved to erase it, and the outline of the draped car squirms vigorously enough to be groping for a different shape. (p.68)</blockquote>In a world so unerringly&nbsp;<i>intent</i>, a world in which even the detail is dangerous, it's not hard to believe that there may be others out there after all, be they Kind Folk or fairies or demons or dreams. I urge you only to be careful what you call 'em. Names are of course a source of power in the old stories, entangled are they are in questions of identity; questions that <i>The Kind Folk </i>asks—and eventually, evocatively, answers—to unforgettable effect.<br /><br />This, dear reader, is a novel with a name... a novel that knows exactly what it is... and what it is, is brilliant.<br /><br /></div></div></div><div><div style="text-align: center;">***</div></div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /><b>The Kind Folk</b><br />by Ramsey Campbell<br /><br />US Publication:<br />September 2012, PS / August 2016, Tor<br /><br />Buy this book from<br /><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Kind-Folk-Ramsey-Campbell/dp/0765382458/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1469441928&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=ramsey+campbell+kind+folk&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-21&amp;linkId=a14f2b6c37f7cfa9e11d936440f1823e" target="_blank">Amazon.co.uk</a>&nbsp;/&nbsp;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Kind-Folk-Ramsey-Campbell/dp/0765382458/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1469441944&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=ramsey+campbell+kind+folk&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-20&amp;linkId=2f3de71769674578135c788546472646" target="_blank">Amazon.com</a><br /><a href="http://www.bookdepository.com/book/9780765382450/?a_aid=scotspec" target="_blank">The Book Depository</a><br /><i><br /></i><i>Recommended and Related Reading</i><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Darkest-Part-Woods-Ramsey-Campbell/dp/1848634927/ref=as_li_ss_tl?_encoding=UTF8&amp;qid=1469442467&amp;sr=8-1&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-21&amp;linkId=3f8a0f9716546d90e40e1e12f6a51540" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-W8aBmpbpNrI/V5XqBvEGqgI/AAAAAAAAPGs/opbkK4iurMcQlw2mhFq1PrRad--EjPUggCLcB/s200/darkestpartofthewoods-us.jpg" width="131" /></a><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Warren-Brian-Evenson/dp/0765393158/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1469442598&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=warren+evenson&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-21&amp;linkId=886b71862b4a4a78578faafc3b722f63" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-DAIJd3LUWsI/V5Xq01aOOPI/AAAAAAAAPG4/tpbw5nJWhBAvXyWNPVbXS8eJfBf3pmAvgCLcB/s200/warren.jpg" width="125" /></a><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Some-Kind-Fairy-Graham-Joyce/dp/0575115297/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1469457761&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=some+kind+of+fairy+tale&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-21&amp;linkId=c4e1dc4fe3c3f034242d44481f8adce0" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-TvVtu2xsNkI/V5YlWmfqYOI/AAAAAAAAPHQ/1HbVtLqLTtkR7DP-vFMGNEDqjx4y_WkWgCLcB/s200/somekindoffairytale-uk.jpg" width="130" /></a></div></div>http://scotspec.blogspot.com/2016/09/book-review-kind-folk-by-ramsey-campbell.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Niall Alexander)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6498739347909985243.post-9092392668688365460Thu, 15 Sep 2016 13:00:00 +00002016-09-15T14:00:02.695+01:00Blake Charltonbook reviewchosen onesdisabilityendingsfantasygods and monsterslanguagemagicSpellbreakerSpellwrightBook Review | Spellbreaker by Blake Charlton<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-eJ19YP71Y2E/V3D1j9xJzbI/AAAAAAAAPEQ/N1TzxgLO8xgJU_YUbP447auhQl3LsGN2wCKgB/s1600/spellbreaker-uk.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-eJ19YP71Y2E/V3D1j9xJzbI/AAAAAAAAPEQ/N1TzxgLO8xgJU_YUbP447auhQl3LsGN2wCKgB/s320/spellbreaker-uk.jpg" width="208" /></a><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-SemoVJDeCNI/V3D1j6lpQ9I/AAAAAAAAPEU/wnIVFrpnzY8h0ec4jHtU7S2lZSbVWC7VQCKgB/s1600/spellbreaker-us.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-SemoVJDeCNI/V3D1j6lpQ9I/AAAAAAAAPEU/wnIVFrpnzY8h0ec4jHtU7S2lZSbVWC7VQCKgB/s320/spellbreaker-us.jpg" width="210" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>Leandra Weal has a bad habit of getting herself into dangerous situations.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>While hunting neodemons in her role as Warden of Ixos, Leandra obtains a prophetic spell that provides a glimpse one day into her future. She discovers that she is doomed to murder someone she loves, soon, but not who. That's a pretty big problem for a woman who has a shark god for a lover, a hostile empress for an aunt, a rogue misspelling wizard for a father, and a mother who—especially when arguing with her daughter—can be a real dragon.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>Leandra's quest to unravel the mystery of the murder-she-will-commit becomes more urgent when her chronic disease flares up and the Ixonian Archipelago is plagued by natural disasters, demon worshiping cults and fierce political infighting. Everywhere she turns, Leandra finds herself amid intrigue and conflict. It seems her bad habit for getting into dangerous situations is turning into a full blown addiction.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>As chaos spreads across Ixos, Leandra and her troubled family must race to uncover the shocking truth about a prophesied demonic invasion, human language, and their own identities... if they don't kill each other first.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>***</i></div><div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />Although it was a small novel, both in size and in scope, <i>Spellwright </i>made a sizeable splash in the speculative fiction scene when it was released six years or so ago. First-time author Blake Charlton brought his own experiences as "a proud dyslexic" to bear brilliantly by exploring the place of a young man who misspells everything in a world in which magic is literally written.<br /><br /><i>Spellbound </i>was bigger than <i>Spellwright </i>in the same several senses. It expanded the overarching narrative from the magical academy where Nicodemus Weal came of age and learned of something called the Disjunction to take in a distant city and a second central character. Again like the author, a medical school student by day and a writer by night at the time, Francesca DeVega was a physician poised to use her powers to heal the needy, but when she too became aware of the coming catastrophe, she had to put her pursuits on the back-burner to help Nico defeat the demons—demons that meant to destroy the lifeblood of the living: language.<br /><br />But the demons were not defeated by our heroes... only delayed. And now, in <i>Spellbreaker</i>—not the longest volume of Charlton's inventive trilogy but unequivocally the most ambitious—the Disjunction is at last at hand.<br /><br /><a name='more'></a>To say it's been a long time coming would be something of an understatement. Quite aside from the five years that have elapsed between the publication of book two and this supposedly standalone conclusion, the canon of this saga has advanced dramatically. It's been three decades and change since the events of <i>Spellbound</i>. Its paired protagonists have married and had a child. Leandra is "half-human and half-textual, the daughter of a dragon, too damn clever by half, fond of getting into trouble, and continuously fighting a disease that will—everyone agrees—kill her far too soon." (p.89)<br /><br />She's also the Warden of Ixos, an island under the auspices of the League which Lea's parents have helped to lead for the larger part of her life. Against them, at the very head of the Empire,&nbsp;sits Nico's half-sister Vivian. Both factions intend to defend against the Disjunction, whenever it actually happens, but that's just about all they have in common. Indeed, they've become so divided by their ideological differences that they're on the brink of open conflict:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">Both Empire and League claimed that their champion was the Halcyon and that of the other was the Storm Petrel. [Nico] had anguished for so long about what he might truly be. But now he began to wonder if perhaps neither he nor his half-sister were inherently saviour or destroyer. [..] Yes, bloody times were coming, chaos was coming, a test of character and prophecy. But within all that was coming would be the most important struggle: the fight to protect the best of human potentials. (p.163)</blockquote>Lea, for her part, is as interested in this last as her father, but because of the life she's led on Ixos—away from it all, as it were—she takes a more pessimistic view of the potential of people than Nico:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">"We've built a civilisation in which the strong prey on the weak. We created divinities to answer our prayers even though many of those prayers are malicious. Our neodemons abuse and kill the weak. And why do we do it? So we can keep up with the empire. And what's the empire do? Cannibalise their deities so they can keep up with us. There's no point to trying to survive the Disjunction if we are no better than the demons." (p.295)</blockquote>In the course of looking for a third way through the imminent conflict, one that doesn't require her to ally with either the Empire or the League, Lea meets with a smuggler who sells her a godspell derived from a deconstructed divinity. This allows her to see who she might be twenty four hours into the future, and the first time she uses it, she learns that by then, she'll either have killed someone she loves, or be dead herself.<br /><br />That timetable dictates the remainder of <i>Spellbreaker</i>, insofar as almost everything Charlton has been building towards in his trilogy comes to a head in that brief period. Before the mystery of just who Lea is to slaughter is resolved, Nico and Francesca's respective destinies are determined, the League squares off against the Empire, Vivian and her half-brother have at it, and, last but certainly not least, the Disjunction comes... if not necessarily in the sense you'd expect.<br /><br />A ridiculously busy day, I dare say, and although the tight timing of it all stretches credibility a bit, that readers must run the gamut of these momentous events makes most of <i>Spellbreaker </i>tremendously compelling. Most,&nbsp;but not all; not the beginning, in particular. For all that <i>Spellbound </i>began the&nbsp;embiggening of Charlton's trilogy, overall, it felt rather rushed and somewhat muddled—as do the early stages of <i>Spellbreaker</i>.<br /><br />Why? Because this final installment wants to have it all. It wants to be an ending <i>and </i>a new beginning. It wants to address questions left over from Nico and Francesca's last adventures, but because it wants to be accessible to newcomers too, everything of significance that's been said before has to be said again, in layman's terms—only then can returning readers have their answers. I can't speak to how complete <i>Spellbreaker </i>will feel to the folks it wants to welcome to the fold for the first time, but I will say that there's so much for them to take on board that they're apt to be absolutely baffled at the start.<br /><br />All of which makes for an awkward reintroduction to a wonderful, albeit increasingly unwieldy world—one that's grown in complexity with every successive text, and has, as such, gotten harder and harder to get your head around. That said, <i>Spellbreaker</i>'s matured milieu is much improved from book two's, and once the narrative catch-up is complete, Charlton brings the magic back.<br /><br />Much of that magic comes from the fact that the story, split as it is between Nico, Francesca and Lea, relates what is fundamentally a family affair, and having seen these characters come together from nothing, there's a real emotional weight to a tale that threatens to tear our protagonists—new and old—apart.<br /><br />It's a real pleasure to see Nico so sure of himself after so much uncertainty, and Francesca is as refreshingly direct and intelligent as ever. I struggled a little with Lea, in that she exhibits "the limitless potentials—grand and grotesque—of a soul," (p.473) making her markedly harder to root for than either her mother or father, but the darker things she does help to bring into focus the larger themes of this series: language as a tool both beautiful and a terrible; humanity's need for healing; and in particular difference as debilitating, but also positively transformative.<br /><br /><i>Spellbreaker </i>may be a conclusion compromised by its seeming need to appeal to new readers, but beyond the awkwardness it's a&nbsp;suitably sensitive and sometimes spectacular send-off to a trilogy that's come into its own over the course of the years it took to complete, just as Blake Charlton himself has.<br /><br /></div></div></div><div><div style="text-align: center;">***</div></div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /><b>Spellbreaker</b><br />by Blake Charlton<br /><br />UK Publication: August 2016, Voyager<br />US Publication: August 2016, Tor<br /><br />Buy this book from<br /><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Spellbreaker-Book-Spellwright-Trilogy/dp/0007368917/ref=as_li_ss_tl?_encoding=UTF8&amp;qid=1467020164&amp;sr=8-1&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-21&amp;linkId=905dc7d8f44afd80a98acf5ba3549ffc" target="_blank">Amazon.co.uk</a>&nbsp;/&nbsp;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Spellbreaker-Spellwright-Trilogy-Blake-Charlton/dp/076531729X/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1467020105&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=Spellbreaker+by+Blake+Charlton&amp;&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-20&amp;linkId=eaacfe1970b48dea10f04a0970c19ad3" target="_blank">Amazon.com</a><br /><a href="http://www.bookdepository.com/book/9780007368914/?a_aid=scotspec" target="_blank">The Book Depository</a><br /><br />Or get&nbsp;<a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Spellbreaker-Book-Spellwright-Trilogy-ebook/dp/B00EN4LQ2K/ref=as_li_ss_tl?_encoding=UTF8&amp;qid=1467020164&amp;sr=8-1&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-21&amp;linkId=5e314bc80fc191bdb63bd9621b428236" target="_blank">the Kindle edition</a><br /><i><br /></i><i>Recommended and Related Reading</i><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Spellwright-Book-Trilogy/dp/000734919X/ref=as_li_ss_tl?_encoding=UTF8&amp;qid=&amp;sr=&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-21&amp;linkId=ab2a2599ff8780da7511b1abd979115c" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-WFk-ff7BrxM/V3D1jgENyLI/AAAAAAAAPEM/UFVzBxWZZd8ecVDJrIVUDwAgqYZpkMnWgCLcB/s200/spellwright-uk.jpg" width="131" /></a><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dragon-Keeper-Rain-Wild-Chronicles/dp/0008154392/ref=as_li_ss_tl?_encoding=UTF8&amp;qid=1467020437&amp;sr=8-10&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-21&amp;linkId=477171234a0f847b39c8f6b6457dea82" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-mSpSKX5Rc5M/V3D1CrzlFJI/AAAAAAAAPD8/wa8jEKnRVS4_AXWxHxcASHs2lGAA-04RwCLcB/s200/dragonkeeper.jpg" width="130" /></a><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Blood-Mirror-Book-Lightbringer/dp/0356504603/ref=as_li_ss_tl?_encoding=UTF8&amp;qid=&amp;sr=&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-21&amp;linkId=29193e973d449b912263c02e28a3cf07" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-nwcIjHNb-hI/V3D1D9-3lGI/AAAAAAAAPEE/zPw2eVhcwTs_mFD4IvpFVdQsKhxfoiGRACLcB/s200/bloodmirror-uk.jpg" width="129" /></a></div></div>http://scotspec.blogspot.com/2016/09/book-review-spellbreaker-by-blake.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Niall Alexander)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6498739347909985243.post-324304200587238390Thu, 25 Aug 2016 13:00:00 +00002016-08-25T14:00:03.316+01:00apocalyptic fictionbook reviewdiscriminationfantasymagicmiddle volume syndromeN. K. JemisinThe Broken Earththe end of the world againThe Obelisk GatetrilogiesBook Review | The Obelisk Gate by N. K. Jemisin<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-r2mbH-jGFyI/V7HgvDRsqpI/AAAAAAAAPIg/-ypB3kYhnbcWvnF96XejO_nDL3PH6VLwACLcB/s1600/obeliskgate.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-r2mbH-jGFyI/V7HgvDRsqpI/AAAAAAAAPIg/-ypB3kYhnbcWvnF96XejO_nDL3PH6VLwACLcB/s400/obeliskgate.jpg" width="253" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>The season of endings grows darker, as civilisation fades into the long cold night.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>Essun—once Damaya, once Syenite, now avenger—has found shelter, but not her daughter. Instead there is Alabaster Tenring, destroyer of the world, with a request. But if Essun does what he asks, it would seal the fate of the Stillness forever.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>Far away, her daughter Nassun is growing in power—and her choices will break the world.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>***</i></div><div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />Middle volume syndrome sets in in the surprisingly circumspect sequel to <a href="http://www.tor.com/2015/08/03/winter-spring-summer-fall-death-is-the-fifth-and-master-of-all-the-fifth-season-by-n-k-jemisin/" target="_blank">one of the best and bravest books of 2015</a>. Though the world remains remarkable, and the characters at the heart of the narrative are as rich and resonant as ever, <i>The Obelisk Gate</i>&nbsp;sacrifices&nbsp;<i>The Fifth Season</i>'s substance and sense of momentum for a far slighter and slower story.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In the Stillness, a perpetually apocalyptic landscape which may or may not be our planet many generations hence, purpose is a pre-requisite. A use-caste, it's called. There are strongbacks and breeders and cutters and hunters, to name just a few,&nbsp;all of whom are defined by what they do; by what they can contribute to the communities, or comms, that they call home.<br /><br />This is a hard world, however, replete with hard people. Season after Season—of widespread death by choking, boiling and breathlessness among other, equally unpleasant ends—has seen to that, so no comm will carry you&nbsp;if you're not prepared to pull your weight in some way.&nbsp;In the Stillness, there's just no place for waste.<br /><br />No place for orogenes like our heroes, either. Able as they are to manipulate thermal and kinetic energy, orogenes, or roggas, have huge power, and with it, responsibility. That they could choose to behave irresponsibly, or behave in that fashion by accident, represents a risk most of the men and women of this world aren't willing to take. To wit, orogenes are either slaughtered as soon as they start exhibiting abilities, or sent to the Fulcrum, to be trained; some might say tamed.<br /><br />Dear little Damaya, <i>The Fifth Season</i>'s first perspective, was one such soul, summarily taken from her parents simply because she was different. At the Fulcrum, she was shaped—through pain and the promise of gain—into Syenite, said text's second perspective, but when, years later, she discovered the depths of the depravity underpinning this facility, she escaped, and again changed her name. As Essun, the third of <i>The Fifth Season</i>'s three POVs, she met a man and had a family, all while hiding what she was, as well as what her children were... just as N. K. Jemisin hid the fact that her novel's seemingly separate narrators were one and the same.<br /><br />That discovery packed a proper punch, but it's a known quantity now—as indeed is Essun's deception.<br /><br /><a name='more'></a>After outing her as an orogene, her hateful husband Jija coldly killed their infant son for it, before running off with their adolescent daughter. Essun spent the bulk of <i>The Fifth Season </i>trying, and failing, to find them. In <i>The Obelisk Gate</i>, readers, at least, learn where they went, and why: to a comm called Found Moon, in the hopes of curing Nassun's own inherited orogeny.<br /><br />Nassun herself isn't entirely convinced of this, but she'll do almost anything to keep her daddy happy—not least because when her daddy gets angry, his murderous rage takes centre stage. So Nassun knuckles down and does her level best to be something she isn't; anything other than what she is. Little does she know, initially, that the so-called Guardian who takes her into his tutelage—a familiar face from the Fulcrum—may be making her into a monster.<br /><br />While we know where Nassun's landed from the start of the narrative, Essun, alas, is entirely in the dark. She hasn't quite given up her daughter for dead, but she has lost her trail, and with another Season in full swing—a Season to end all Seasons, even—she has no choice other than to take cover in an underground comm called Castrima which welcomes orogenes openly. Castrima, of course, has its fair share of problems, but they're not the sort of problems Essun is used to solving:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">It's stuff you've never had to think about before. Complaints that the hot water in the communal pools isn't hot enough. A serious shortage of potters but an overabundance of people who know how to sew. Fungus in one of the granary caverns; several months' supply had to be burned lest it contaminate the rest. A meat shortage. You've gone from thinking obsessively about one person to having to be concerned with many. It's a bit sudden. (pp.24-25)</blockquote>You can say that again...<br /><br />Whereas <i>The Fifth Season </i>was an incredibly kinetic novel, with lots of moving parts and not a little mechanical magic greasing its wheels,&nbsp;<i>The Obelisk Gate</i>,&nbsp;in stark contrast, stands still. Most of it takes place in the claustrophobic, crystalline caverns of Castrima, and although that could be fascinating, I'm afraid little of note happens there that couldn't have occurred anywhere. A good portion of the book is given over to "ridiculous, mundane, incredibly tedious stuff," (p.128) as above,&nbsp;and although Essun comes to love its like, I don't know that I ever did.<br /><br />Walling Essun off in a comm does serves several purposes, that said. It gives her something new to lose, and given that she's lost everything else, or thinks she has, that's essential. It also allows her to learn more about her orogeny, and happily, the barebones magic system of <i>The Fifth Season </i>is substantially advanced in this sequel. But as narratively necessary as these things are in this ongoing story, they don't in and of themselves make the stakes or the pace of <i>The Obelisk Gate</i> great:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">This isn't just losing track of days and nights. Some of the strange elasticity of time comes from your having lost Nassun, and with her the urgency of purpose. Without that purpose you feel sort of attenuated and loose, as aimless as compass needles must have been during the Wandering Season. (pp.125-126)</blockquote>What with the terrible tension between Nassun and her father, Nassun's chapters are markedly more engrossing than her mother's, and they successfully develop both her and her morally mysterious teacher into more complete and conflicted characters than the plot points they played in book the first of&nbsp;The Broken Earth.<br /><br />Sadly, these sections are few and far between, and Essun's far larger share of the story only really gets going when the comm she's been assimilated into comes under threat. "There is a catalyst alive in Castrima now, accelerating unseen chemical reactions, facilitating unexpected outcomes," (p.286) notes the narrator, and not before time. But this is left to the last act, and in the interim... you can really feel the wheels of Jemisin's trilogy spin.<br /><br /><i>The Obelisk Gate </i>is small and safe where <i>The Fifth Season </i>was large and surprising, static where said was speedy; and although it builds out the world and its workings well, and establishes Nassun as a character no less complex by the end than Essun, it's a shame all the same that such a stunning start should be succeeded by such a sedentary, albeit completely readable sequel.<br /><br /></div></div></div><div><div style="text-align: center;">***</div></div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /><b>The Obelisk Gate</b><br />by N. K. Jemisin<br /><br />UK &amp; US Publication: August 2016, Orbit<br /><br />Buy this book from<br /><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Obelisk-Gate-Broken-Earth-Trilogy/dp/0356508366/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1471275060&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=The+Obelisk+Gate+by+N.+K.+Jemisin&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-21&amp;linkId=d3e8d4d0a204d737902be83843bbf9d5" target="_blank">Amazon.co.uk</a>&nbsp;/&nbsp;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Obelisk-Gate-Broken-Earth/dp/0316229261/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1471275069&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=The+Obelisk+Gate+by+N.+K.+Jemisin&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-20&amp;linkId=799055cffbcbf6c829dda6fc9c5d92e1" target="_blank">Amazon.com</a><br /><a href="http://www.bookdepository.com/book/9780356508368/?a_aid=scotspec" target="_blank">The Book Depository</a><br /><br />Or get&nbsp;<a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Obelisk-Gate-Broken-Earth-Trilogy-ebook/dp/B010PIFF6K/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1471275060&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=The+Obelisk+Gate+by+N.+K.+Jemisin&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-21&amp;linkId=f8933707d45d7d1fba6f2611713955f4" target="_blank">the Kindle edition</a><br /><i><br /></i><i>Recommended and Related Reading</i><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Fifth-Season-Broken-Earth-Trilogy/dp/0356508196/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;psc=1&amp;refRID=44NJE1H19BZKZ2N49SFY&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-21&amp;linkId=d9d740ffa5349c7df8479364212ee8b8" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-wMtZm7EO58k/V7HgvzFA0JI/AAAAAAAAPIk/fwVhcN2VG4UHSqz8tw7UCvSCYRctOaLIwCEw/s200/fifthseason.jpg" width="131" /></a><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Uprooted-Naomi-Novik/dp/1447294149/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;psc=1&amp;refRID=44NJE1H19BZKZ2N49SFY&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-21&amp;linkId=1e2887e16259d8265076d6398323a127" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-sNsw5Ix8rrQ/V7NON_0VgXI/AAAAAAAAPI8/R3kNW7osBLY8He513DGYFGXeK04uOPQUgCLcB/s200/uprooted-pb.jpg" width="131" /></a><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Children-Earth-Sky-Guy-Gavriel/dp/1473628105/ref=as_li_ss_tl?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1471368567&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=children+of+earth+and+sky&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-21&amp;linkId=d2cdbf041ff258cc822880793b232c0f" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/--DH9kIbVKc4/V7HgxTZoKxI/AAAAAAAAPIo/-wNiEbm4B3cCorQJ7jcnRriOg9-dQBNOQCEw/s200/childrenofearthandsky-uk.jpg" width="129" /></a></div></div>http://scotspec.blogspot.com/2016/08/book-review-obelisk-gate-by-n-k-jemisin.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Niall Alexander)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6498739347909985243.post-2144383665187660530Tue, 23 Aug 2016 13:00:00 +00002016-08-23T14:00:30.863+01:00book reviewconventionsgods and monstershorrorI Am ProvidenceLovecraftmurder mysteriesNick MamatasBook Review | I Am Providence by Nick Mamatas<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-23Opn-PANdM/V4TDk-Ov89I/AAAAAAAAPFA/oc4ODGZYM1o0lsZQIOVqVBwohl0FDF75QCLcB/s1600/iamprovidence.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-23Opn-PANdM/V4TDk-Ov89I/AAAAAAAAPFA/oc4ODGZYM1o0lsZQIOVqVBwohl0FDF75QCLcB/s400/iamprovidence.jpg" width="266" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>For fans of legendary pulp author H. P. Lovecraft, there is nothing bigger than the annual Providence-based convention the Summer Tentacular. Horror writer Colleen Danzig doesn’t know what to expect when she arrives, but is unsettled to find that among the hobnobbing between scholars and literary critics are a group of real freaks: book collectors looking for volumes bound in human skin, and true believers claiming the power to summon the Elder God Cthulhu, one of their idol’s most horrific fictional creations, before the weekend is out.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>Colleen’s trip spirals into a nightmare when her roommate for the weekend, an obnoxious novelist known as Panossian, turns up dead, his face neatly removed. What’s more unsettling is that, in the aftermath of the murder, there is little concern among the convention goers. The Summer Tentacular continues uninterrupted, except by a few bumbling police.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>Everyone at the convention is a possible suspect, but only Colleen seems to show any interest in solving the murder. So she delves deep into the darkness, where occult truths have been lurking since the beginning of time. A darkness where Panossian is waiting, spending a lot of time thinking about Colleen, narrating a new Lovecraftian tale that could very well spell her doom.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>***</i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><br /></i></div><div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: justify;">Ahead of Ian McEwan's literary nasty <i>Nutshell</i>, a fable of infidelity readers will only be able to experience from the perspective of a foetus, <i>I Am Providence </i>proffers a murder mystery narrated in no small part by the victim of that very vicious killing in the moments before his failing brain cracks and crumbles like "a sponge drying in the sun." (p.162)<br /><br />Panos Panossian is an utterly insufferable author of Lovecraftian lore, so it's either fitting or simply suspicious that he meets his maker on the first day of the annual Summer Tentacular. "Providence's premiere literary conference about pulp-writer, racist, and weirdo Howard Phillips Lovecraft" (p.1) features, funnily enough, "a veritable 'Who's That?' of horror fiction," (p.30) including one Colleen Danzig. A newcomer to mythos mania with just a few short stories to her name, she was set to share a room with Panossian, but when the con goes on despite his death, Colleen decides to determine just whodunnit. After all, "if anything is possible, then yes, an untrained writer could find a murderer." (p.173)<br /><br />Not just a murderer, but a mutilator too, because to add insult to injury, the killer, whoever he or she may be, purloined poor Panossian's face in addition to his future...<br /><br />Singularly sickening as the murder this mystery revolves around is, if the truth be told, there's no shortage of suspects in Nick Mamatas' scathing portrayal of Lovecraftian fandom:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">The Tentacular was a strangely aggressive environment—writers jockeying for position, people bellowing at one another, men sneering at women out of some abject simultaneous attraction and repulsion. It was high school all over again, except that all the kids with a measure of social intelligence were at the homecoming dance and the kids left behind were the meatheads, glue-sniffers, nerds, and minor league bullies. Geeks who liked to show off their knowledge of esoteric subjects, the more repulsive, the better. (p.74)</blockquote>That last—"the more repulsive, the better"—may well have been Mamatas' mantra whilst working on <i>I Am Providence</i>, because it is,&nbsp;if not a horrid novel, then a novel of horridness. Almost all of its characters are creeps, not least Colleen, who is so cavalier and careless in her pursuit of the truth that she points the finger at pretty much everyone she meets, such that it's no wonder she hasn't made a great many friends by the end.<br /><br /><a name='more'></a>Not that anyone would want friends like these. Other than R. G. and maybe Ms. Phantasia's acolyte Chloe, the Tentacular's other attendees don't read like real people. Rather, they come across as embodiments of the most repellent elements of clique culture. In the way that they treat one another they're dismissive and demeaning; in the way that they treat outsiders—even the keen ones like Colleen—they're insular and indignant. No one is nice. No one is welcoming. No one is intelligent or generous or genuine.<br /><br />A single exception to show that not all con-goers are heinous human beings would have helped me to feel better about what Mamatas seems to be suggesting about speculative fiction fans specifically, but it wasn't to be, and sadly&nbsp;<i>I Am Providence</i>'s narrative isn't any more balanced than its characters. Its pitch-perfect premise and early promise give way to a miserable, meandering thing that feels far longer than it is. Colleen's cockamamie theories about the crime she resolved to solve are "simultaneously complex and half-baked." (p.228) One follows another follows another and then there's The End.<br /><br />The best moments in the between times are those in which Mamatas threatens to let a little light into the eldritch darkness. Alas, even his threats are empty. <i>I Am Providence </i>has a sense of humour, but it's cruel where it could be cutting, and contrived instead of clever. It has all the ingredients necessary for a magnificent murder mystery, but before we've even tasted them, they've been wasted. It has a host of insightful diatribes on the allure of Lovecraft and the like as indulgences of "the fantasy that there is something beyond death," (p.162) but at the last, Mamatas rejects even these:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">All the ratiocination the human mind could muster; all the piecing together of disparate documentation from ship captains, from academics, from harried witnesses; the collections of artifacts and ancient codices; even the revelation of ancient cities and alien species; none of it mattered, ultimately. No matter what was discovered through application of logic and reason, it wouldn't be enough to forestall doom. Cthulhu wasn't the antagonist of 'The Call of Cthulhu,' and the doomed sailor Gustaf Johansen wasn't the hero. Cthulhu's eventual rise and the utter destruction of humanity—as an epiphenomenon of some machinations we couldn't possible comprehend—wasn't a threat, it was a promise. Like Judgment Day without the Christians, the apocalypse without salvation. No hint of an afterlife either. (p.230)</blockquote>Clearly, there are some great ideas in here, but even if you can get past the flat characters and the circumnavigative narrative and the nastiness of the entire enterprise,&nbsp;<i>I Am Providence </i>goes nowhere of note, oh-so-slowly. The finest&nbsp;"Lovecraftian fiction posits a world that is indescribable, incomprehensible, and delicious," (p.153) a world that pairs pain with wonder, but there's nothing wonderful about this, and a dearth of deliciousness.<br /><br /></div></div></div><div><div style="text-align: center;">***</div></div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /><b>I Am Providence</b><br />by Nick Mamatas<br /><br />US Publication: August 2016, Night Shade Books<br /><br />Buy this book from<br /><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/am-Providence-Novel-Nick-Mamatas/dp/1597808350/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1468318413&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=i+am+providence+mamatas&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-21&amp;linkId=ea67ae1c429e571382473ba77c7472e0" target="_blank">Amazon.co.uk</a>&nbsp;/&nbsp;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Am-Providence-Novel-Nick-Mamatas/dp/1597808350/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1468318424&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=i+am+providence+mamatas&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-20&amp;linkId=f1357b098bb96fd3d37af55a5dc10102" target="_blank">Amazon.com</a><br /><a href="http://www.bookdepository.com/book/9781597808354/?a_aid=scotspec" target="_blank">The Book Depository</a><br /><br />Or get&nbsp;<a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/I-am-Providence-Nick-Mamatas-ebook/dp/B01HU748HQ/ref=as_li_ss_tl?_encoding=UTF8&amp;qid=1468318413&amp;sr=8-1&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-21&amp;linkId=66873009a433974c23f5d0ea4f7fd5a8" target="_blank">the Kindle edition</a><br /><i><br /></i><i>Recommended and Related Reading</i><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Necronomicon-Weird-Lovecraft-Fiction-GOLLANCZ/dp/0575081562/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1468318963&amp;sr=8-4&amp;keywords=necronomicon&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-21&amp;linkId=22627e61e8b444a256b915957ef2eff0" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-xvmszz10L3c/V4TEsm92UJI/AAAAAAAAPFQ/JitX7MqOSBsbLqRwsk59babdBqDh5IEGwCLcB/s200/necronomicon.jpg" width="133" /></a><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Last-Weekend-Novel-Zombies-Booze/dp/1597808423/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1468318783&amp;sr=8-3&amp;keywords=nick+mamatas&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-21&amp;linkId=bb382b12570f9e5629d65a19f4629ac1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-iWmA5zJwCdM/V4TEu02e8yI/AAAAAAAAPFU/a3cTeVmiitEb_F08iZ-lxpYFtIIaGDFHgCLcB/s200/lastweekend.jpg" width="128" /></a><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Madness-Cthulhu-Anthology-One/dp/1781164525/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;psc=1&amp;refRID=ZG600EVJJ4591SQE6V1H&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-21&amp;linkId=9b9da3a12cd13f0ab84b04411f7878f4" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VxrvnDL4LWI/V4TEr0lMAbI/AAAAAAAAPFM/AfpxcxLsYE4S-l4R2vNPR_g5nX_69LsVQCLcB/s200/madnessofcth.jpg" width="131" /></a></div></div>http://scotspec.blogspot.com/2016/08/book-review-i-am-providence-by-nick.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Niall Alexander)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6498739347909985243.post-3124493658668649321Thu, 18 Aug 2016 13:00:00 +00002016-08-18T14:00:44.264+01:00book reviewfaithfound fictionghost storieshorrorJason ArnoppThe Last Days of Jack Sparksunreliable narratorsBook Review | The Last Days of Jack Sparks by Jason Arnopp<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-X4RJcMRxFiU/V1aZIZ27XXI/AAAAAAAAPAQ/NgYJ6hr6wGUQ4rQgy2AXyxL3W3RiH1cIACLcB/s1600/jacksparks.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-X4RJcMRxFiU/V1aZIZ27XXI/AAAAAAAAPAQ/NgYJ6hr6wGUQ4rQgy2AXyxL3W3RiH1cIACLcB/s400/jacksparks.jpg" width="261" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>Jack Sparks died while writing this book.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>It was no secret that journalist Jack Sparks had been researching the occult for his new book. No stranger to controversy, he'd already triggered a furious Twitter storm by mocking an exorcism he witnessed. Then there was that video: forty seconds of chilling footage that Jack repeatedly claimed was not of his making, yet was posted from his own YouTube account.&nbsp;</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>Nobody knew what happened to Jack in the days that followed—until now.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>***</i></div><div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />If Hunter S. Thompson had written a <i>Blair Witch&nbsp;</i>tie-in,&nbsp;it might have looked a little something like this. A gonzo ghost story that trades in unreliable narration and drug-fuelled devastation,&nbsp;<i>The Last Days of Jack Sparks&nbsp;</i>marks the original fiction debut of music journalist and now novelist Jason Arnopp, and has as its central character a man who made his name writing for the NME before properly letting loose in a few bestselling books.<br /><br />That's where the similarities between the author and the authored end, however. I have reason to believe that Jason Arnopp is a genuinely decent human being, whereas Jack Sparks is an egotistical twit who, for his first trick, travelled the length and breadth of Great Britain on a pogo stick, offending everyone he encountered equally. Since then, he's gobbled up gang culture and gotten close to a couple of Class A chemical concoctions, with similarly repugnant results.<br /><br />Now, for his new novel, he's set his sights on a Halloween theme. Could ghosts really be real? Our intrepid reporter wants to know. So much so that&nbsp;<i>Jack Sparks on the Supernatural</i> will be his last book, because he died, quite violently, while writing it.<br /><br />We learn this thanks to Jack Sparks' estranged brother Alastair, who footnotes and provides a foreword for the first draft of the found fiction that follows:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">The decision to publish <i>Jack Sparks on the Supernatural </i>in its entirely uncensored form was in no way taken lightly, and I know how very difficult it is for the bereaved to read accounts of such horrendous events. Yet I also hope this book may yield some form of closure and put an end to unhelpful internet speculation—not least concerning the nature of my brother's death. (p.8)</blockquote>Be warned, though, that Alastair's intentions might not be so wholly noble. "Believe me," he begs—but why should we? There's something defensive, dare I say desperate, about his abrupt introduction. And not long later, we learn that he and his brother weren't even on speaking terms towards the end of Jack's tenure.&nbsp;Might Alastair have an axe of his own to grind?<br /><br />Jack indubitably does. He's a man on a mission at the outset of his ultimate effort: not to find evidence of things that go bump in the night, but to disprove every indication that they may. To wit, he sits in on an exorcism in Italy; laughs out loud as he live-tweets it, even. What he sees that day is hard to explain away, but Jack is determined to do so, or die trying.<br /><br /><a name='more'></a>After that catastrophe—for it's in Italy that the body count begins—he visits with a so-called combat magician in Hong Kong and sneers from the sidelines as she kicks an evil spirit's ethereal ass. Here, too, Jack senses an unearthly presence, but instead of admitting to this, he dismisses his suspicions and heads to Hollywood. There, he hires a sevensome of struggling scientists in the hopes of reproducing the results of a seventies experiment which supposedly showed that ghosts are not depictions of dead people but living thoughts given form.<br /><br />In the midst of all this, our protagonist's precious internet presence is purloined, and a creepy video is released to his hundreds of thousands of subscribers. It's deleted almost immediately, but not before Jack has seen it himself, and realised that it means more than it seems.<br /><br />Arranging his narrative around such a self-centred central perspective means that Arnopp has to walk quite the tightrope in his characterisation of Jack, but he does so, dear reader, without the slightest stumble.<br /><br />There's no question that Jack is an immensely objectionable person. "Like religion, drug addiction is for the weak," (p.47) he believes. Later, he notes that he has "never cared about anyone who isn't Jack Sparks. There's a smoking pit where my empathy should be," (p.231) and that's as may be, but although Jack is a far cry from a nice guy, that isn't to say he ain't entertaining. As he takes aim at the sacred, pokes fun at the profane, says and does the things we decent human beings would feel guilty simply for thinking, you have to laugh. If you don't, I dare say this isn't the book for you.<br /><br />If you have it in your heart to laugh at Jack, you're sure to feel a certain sympathy for him too, not least because his brother's editorial intrusions extend beyond the aforementioned introduction. At pains to prove that his sordid sibling is not to be trusted, and thus that he is, Alastair often interrupts Jack's narrative to present evidence that the latter lacks veracity. And it's true, to be sure, that the titular figure is hiding something significant. There comes a pivotal point in the novel when he admits as much:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">Up until now, I've described real events while distorting certain truths. I've played down the drugs. I've made no mention of the fear, the tears, all that slow-boil nausea in my guts. I haven't told you the real reason I'm writing&nbsp;<i>Jack Sparks on the Supernatural</i>. (p.200)</blockquote>This confession serves to underscore the sense that there's much amiss with the other Sparks' actions, especially given that the dead can't defend themselves. Whatever dark deeds Jack has done, he's already paid the ultimate price... and yet here we have his own flesh and blood rubbing salt in said mortal wound.<br /><br />Alastair's agenda is a fascinating question with which to wrestle, and&nbsp;it's my pleasure to tell you&nbsp;the author addresses it cleverly at the same time as bringing the other elements of&nbsp;<i>The Last Days of Jack Sparks </i>together in time for a truly fearsome finale that left me feeling like I'd read something very special. Arnopp's novel isn't always awesome—the early-going is unfortunately episodic, and the Hollywood Paranormals are too numerous to do justice to—but when it is, it's every inch as cruel and cool and unusual as the Fear and Loathing series that Jack Sparks idolises. Bloomin' spooky, too.<br /><br /></div></div></div><div><div style="text-align: center;">***</div></div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /><b>The Last Days of Jack Sparks</b><br />by Jason Arnopp<br /><br />UK Publication: April 2016, Orbit<br />US Publication: September 2016, Orbit<br /><br />Buy this book from<br /><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0356506851/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1634&amp;creative=19450&amp;creativeASIN=0356506851&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=thespecscot-21" target="_blank">Amazon.co.uk</a>&nbsp;/&nbsp;<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Last-Days-Jack-Sparks/dp/0316362263/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;keywords=jack%20sparks%20arnopp&amp;qid=1465292188&amp;ref_=sr_1_1_twi_har_2&amp;sr=8-1&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-20&amp;linkId=6c6155d4c887a4ec91c205401b067bd2" target="_blank">Amazon.com</a><br /><a href="http://www.bookdepository.com/book/9780356506852/?a_aid=scotspec" target="_blank">The Book Depository</a><br /><br />Or get&nbsp;<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B010PIFZMO/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1634&amp;creative=19450&amp;creativeASIN=B010PIFZMO&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=thespecscot-21" target="_blank">the Kindle edition</a><br /><i><br /></i><i>Recommended and Related Reading</i><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0356503585/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1634&amp;creative=19450&amp;creativeASIN=0356503585&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=thespecscot-21" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-O46oXKJwXHg/V1aZO2Y3p_I/AAAAAAAAPAY/sH2D2C5dRGQHPKwTfycktCSEYJFRCys5gCLcB/s200/fellside.jpg" width="130" /></a><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B009TAQWKE/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1634&amp;creative=19450&amp;creativeASIN=B009TAQWKE&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=thespecscot-21" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Es3mCCNuV90/V1aZyy7ZmYI/AAAAAAAAPAk/BR4Dtt8MeysNfoQJfWcae-H6CVk8TGECwCLcB/s200/asincerewarning.jpg" width="148" /></a><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0007204493/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1634&amp;creative=19450&amp;creativeASIN=0007204493&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=thespecscot-21" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Vvp6VcvUYOQ/V1aZ_dhTL5I/AAAAAAAAPAw/jrNccqvYPqErOJfzNoOhQIs9BNl-iDd_gCLcB/s200/fearandloathing.jpg" width="131" /></a></div></div>http://scotspec.blogspot.com/2016/08/book-review-last-days-of-jack-sparks-by.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Niall Alexander)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6498739347909985243.post-5516967358304174434Fri, 29 Jul 2016 13:00:00 +00002016-07-29T14:00:33.658+01:00book reviewcoming of agedebutsgenetic engineeringlove storiesmysteriesNina Allanparallel universessfThe Raceunreliable narratorsBook Review | The Race by Nina Allan<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jFklH3jGu3Y/V4dqFujxa4I/AAAAAAAAPFs/ydBgDvqN6McwEc4I0ZSYbIgwH1E6RJrOACLcB/s1600/race.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jFklH3jGu3Y/V4dqFujxa4I/AAAAAAAAPFs/ydBgDvqN6McwEc4I0ZSYbIgwH1E6RJrOACLcB/s400/race.jpg" width="255" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>In a future scarred by fracking and ecological collapse, Jenna Hoolman's world is dominated by illegal smartdog racing: greyhounds genetically modified with human DNA. When her young niece goes missing that world implodes.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>Christy’s life is dominated by fear of her brother, a man she knows capable of monstrous acts and suspects of hiding even darker ones. Desperate to learn the truth she contacts Alex, who has his own demons to fight. Last but not least there's Maree, a young woman undertaking a journey that will change her world forever.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The Race<i> weaves multiple together story threads and realities to take us on a gripping and spellbinding journey.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>***</i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><br /></i></div><div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: justify;">If I were to start this article by stating that&nbsp;<i>The Race </i>is&nbsp;the best debut of the year to date, I'd be telling the truth, to be sure, but I'd be lying to you, too—and that's as apt a tack as any I could take to introduce a review of a book as deceptive and self-reflexive as said.<br /><br />You see, it might be that I was more moved by Nina Allan's first novel than by any other released in recent months—emotionally and, yes, intellectually—but <i>The Race </i>was not released in recent months, not really: NewCon Press published an earlier edition in 2014, which, even absent the substantial and supremely satisfying expansion Allan has added for Titan Books' new and indubitably improved take two, went on to be nominated for the BSFA's Best Novel Award, the John W. Campbell Memorial Prize and the Kitschies' Red Tentacle. And although <i>The Race </i>is indeed Allan's first novel proper, it is, in a sense, a cycle of stories that share subjects and settings, not unlike several of the aforementioned author's earlier efforts, such as <i>Stardust </i>and <i>The Silver Wind</i>.<br /><br />So it's not really a debut and it wasn't really released this year, which leaves just one of my first line's facts unfudged. Happily,&nbsp;<i>The Race </i>actually is amazing, and if you haven't read it already, don't let this second chance pass you by.<br /><br /><i>The Race </i>is a book about longing, and belonging. It's a book about identity—how it's formed for us, and how we go on to fit it to ourselves or else ourselves to it. It's a book that teaches us the value of family; the damage those nearest and dearest to us can do, and the good things, too. It's a book that instructs us to take the measure of our previous experiences before moving fully into the future.<br /><br />It's a book, for the first hundred pages and change, about Jenna Hoolman, who lives in a former gas town with what's left of her family; with her brother Del and his oddball daughter Lumey. Sapphire's glory days are long gone, alas. "It's what you might call an open secret that the entire economy of Sapphire as it is now is funded upon smartdog racing. Officially the sport is still illegal, but that's never stopped it from being huge." (p.11)<br /><br />Smartdog racing is the practice of gambling on greyhounds that have been genetically engineered to have an lifelong link with their runners, which is what the men and women who train and care for these incredibly clever creatures are called. Some people believe they're mind readers, but not Jen's boyfriend Em:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">"I think true telepathy—the kind you see in films—is probably a myth. But something approaching it, definitely. A kind of empathic sixth sense. The work that's been done with the smartdogs is just the start. All runners are natural empaths to an extent, we've known that for a long time. The implant is just a facilitator for their inborn talent. Children like Lumey though—children who don't need an implant at all to communicate—they're the next stage. A new race, almost. And yes [...] that would make her very valuable indeed." (pp.129-130)</blockquote>Valuable enough to kidnap and hold to ransom, to truly devastating effect, not least because the only way Del knows how to raise the money to buy Lumey back from her captors is to wager a sizable sum on his smartdog, Limlasker, winning the Delawarr Triple. "What it came down to was this: Del was proposing to bet his daughter's life on a sodding dog race." (p.67) The race Allan's title refers to, right?<br /><br />Well, you know... yes and no.<br /><br /><a name='more'></a>Because there's a race in the second section of the text, too, in which we're introduced to Christy, a writer who seems to have created Sapphire and its inhabitants whole cloth. Her sad story is of a family that falls apart after the loss of a loved one. "Nobody was to blame and yet we all were. Instead of reaching out to one another we had dived inward, into worlds that lay in close orbit but never touched." (p.205)<br /><br />Christy's share of <i>The Race </i>is only speculative insofar as she writes slightly science-fictional stories set in Sapphire. That said, there is much magic in her narrative, and some tremendously rewarding resonance, culminating in the figurative collision of Christy's world with Jen's when the former rushes to find a missing person that she suspects her brother—a loose cannon reminiscent of Del from the latter's narrative—might have hurt, like he hurt her, or worse.<br /><br />The third and shortest component of the whole addresses race in the ethnic sense. Herein we have Alex, a bit-part player in the second section who, decades later, in the wake of a separation, returns "to the harbour of his home port, a narrow, mean-minded place, rife with old rivalries and uneasy memories" (p.240) at the invitation of an certain writer.<br /><br />Brief as it may be,&nbsp;Alex's meeting with Christy&nbsp;brings a kind of closure to both characters' arcs, and that closure, that sense of putting the past in its place, of learning from rather than belabouring one's mistakes, is realised in <i>The Race</i>'s fourth (if no longer final) fragment, which returns readers to the world of Jen and Del and Lumey, albeit through the eyes of another character: an orphaned empath called Maree. But Maree is not who she appears to be...<br /><br />That's <i>The Race </i>all over, if I'm honest. It's&nbsp;a science fiction novel, but it's not. It both is and is not episodic.&nbsp;It's completely real and yet utterly unreal. Familiar at the same time as strange. It isn't ever what you think it is, except when it is. "There was something about each of the stories that seemed to place [them] beyond the reach of ordinary time," (p.237) something about each of the settings that makes them more alive than landscapes on a canvas, something about each of the characters that elevates them beyond a load of letters arranged on a page. It's hard to put your finger on just what that something is, but perhaps that's the power of language in the hands of a master like Allan:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">Most people tended to think of languages as if they were analogues of each other, lists of words and phrases and grammatical caveats that could be translated like for like, one for another. Yet a language was so much more than simply words for things. Language was like the soft clay used by naturalists to record the tracks left by elusive creatures in out-of-the-way places. It captured everything, reflected everything. (p.434)</blockquote>Like <i>Cloud Atlas </i>recombined with Jo Walton's wonderful <i>Among Others</i>, <i>The Race </i>is interested, above all other things, "in how the lives of ordinary people can become unfastened from reality." (p.251) As such, it steps back and steps back and steps back, <i>Inception</i>-esque, undoing assumptions and exceeding expectations, until the only way further backward is forward. So forth it goes.<br /><br />For all that, though, it's a wonderfully understated work of words, worthy of all the awards NewCon Press' earlier edition was nominated for. But never mind the date of its publication, nor&nbsp;whether or not it's actually Nina Allan's first novel: in and of itself,&nbsp;<i>The Race&nbsp;</i>is absolutely remarkable.<br /><br /></div></div></div><div><div style="text-align: center;">***</div></div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /><b>The Race</b><br />by Nina Allan<br /><br />UK &amp; US Publication: July 2016, Titan Books<br /><br />Buy this book from<br /><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Race-Nina-Allan/dp/178565036X/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1468492027&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=race+nina+allan&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-21&amp;linkId=e7dc891b37658573d4175fef974e19de" target="_blank">Amazon.co.uk</a>&nbsp;/&nbsp;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Race-Nina-Allan/dp/178565036X/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1468492038&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=race+nina+allan&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-20&amp;linkId=0bef03a7070b5471ad35dc52cde18eac" target="_blank">Amazon.com</a><br /><a href="http://www.bookdepository.com/book/9781785650369/?a_aid=scotspec" target="_blank">The Book Depository</a><br /><br />Or get&nbsp;<a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Race-Nina-Allan-ebook/dp/B01G4GS5GY/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1468492027&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=race+nina+allan&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-21&amp;linkId=adcada91a34b2dc558d8bd498977aa80" target="_blank">the Kindle edition</a><br /><i><br /></i><i>Recommended and Related Reading</i><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Harlequin-Winner-Novella-Award-2015/dp/1910124389/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1468492329&amp;sr=8-2&amp;keywords=nina+allan&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-21&amp;linkId=2a8671a9a7af8a30bbe317da9e966343" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-oWnq2yni0H0/V4dqtDs8QHI/AAAAAAAAPF4/Np3VFLKd22cSahJZFrb6WCAQkdxcMBlHgCLcB/s200/harlequin.jpg" width="130" /></a><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Gradual-Christopher-Priest/dp/1473200547/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1468492408&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=christopher+priest&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-21&amp;linkId=fae60452d85c71a5382cdf56bd182112" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-67ISlvcWPxg/V4dquLOGyVI/AAAAAAAAPF8/K1ywMA3GY-MEU3Axo5-Jx7_ffQ_qFOjjQCLcB/s200/gradual.jpg" width="130" /></a><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Among-Others-Jo-Walton/dp/1472106539/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1468492322&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=among+others&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-21&amp;linkId=26693b85d3d75a3fcbc4e0ecd87c40a7" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-uCWCJceZHbE/V4dqHRiQVvI/AAAAAAAAPF0/QCeyOArU8TU_OnETPfztbiYMoPc_hDvAgCEw/s200/amongothers-uk.jpg" width="130" /></a></div></div>http://scotspec.blogspot.com/2016/07/book-review-race-by-nina-allan.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Niall Alexander)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6498739347909985243.post-472048461368965801Wed, 27 Jul 2016 13:00:00 +00002016-07-27T14:00:27.679+01:00book reviewcoming of agemonsters among usThis Savage Songurban fantasyV. E. SchwabBook Review | This Savage Song by V. E. Schwab<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-wskIggxm6TQ/V0w7hGNWAkI/AAAAAAAAO_Q/0A8VVzmjQKQOnzDZoi_Gq7AgF39mrsn8gCLcB/s1600/thissavagesong-uk.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-wskIggxm6TQ/V0w7hGNWAkI/AAAAAAAAO_Q/0A8VVzmjQKQOnzDZoi_Gq7AgF39mrsn8gCLcB/s320/thissavagesong-uk.jpg" width="211" /></a><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-YIPPOfuByic/V0w7hcvGPdI/AAAAAAAAO_U/5LR65DTrBS8pJ8nAJQgI96zinr52BLksQCLcB/s1600/thissavagesong-us.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-YIPPOfuByic/V0w7hcvGPdI/AAAAAAAAO_U/5LR65DTrBS8pJ8nAJQgI96zinr52BLksQCLcB/s320/thissavagesong-us.jpg" width="211" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>Kate Harker and August Flynn are the heirs to a divided city, a grisly metropolis where the violence has begun to create real and deadly monsters. All Kate wants is to be as ruthless as her father, who lets the monsters roam free and makes the inhabitants pay for his protection. August just wants to be human, as good-hearted as his own father but his curse is to be what the humans fear. The thin truce that keeps the Harker and Flynn families at peace is crumbling, and an assassination attempt forces Kate and August into a tenuous alliance. But how long will they survive in a city where no one is safe and monsters are real...</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>***</i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><br /></i></div><div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: justify;">A girl who wants to be a monster and a monster who wants to be a boy learn that you can't always get what they you in <i>This Savage Song</i>, a refreshingly unromantic urban fantasy bolstered by a brilliantly built background and a pair of expertly crafted characters more interested in making the best of their bad lots than in bumping uglies.<br /><br />Though we're given a gaggle of glimpses of the wasted world that surrounds it on all sides, the first volume of V. E. Schwab's Monsters of Verity series takes place primarily in V-City, twelve years on from something called the Phenomenon: an apocalypse of sorts which means, for whatever reason, that monsters are born whenever humans do wrong.<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">The Corsai seemed to come from violent, but nonlethal acts, and the Malchai stemmed from murders, but the Sunai, it was believed, came from the darkest crimes of all: bombings, shootings, massacres, events that claimed not only one life, but <i>many</i>. All that pain and death coalescing into something truly terrible; if a monster's catalyst informed its nature, then the Sunai were the worst things to go bump in the night. (p.190)</blockquote>That's what a lot of the people who live in V-City think, particularly those who've chosen to pay for the privilege, but August Flynn is one such Sunai, and he isn't evil in the least. Sure, he swallows souls whole, but only the souls of sinners, and only then when he absolutely has to.<br /><br />The saviour who took August in in the wake of whatever catastrophe created him has managed to make lemonade out of those very lemons, however, by using said Sunai's nightmarish nature to do good. As the founder of the FTF, an organisation which keeps the South side of this split city safe, Henry Flynn has enlisted August and his kin to seek out and eat bad people. He's also "the only man willing to stand up to a glorified criminal and&nbsp;<i>fight</i>." (p.38)<br /><br />That glorified criminal is Callum Harker, the enterprising mind behind the protection racket that keeps the Corsai and the Malchai at bay beyond the bounds of Henry's territory, and our other protagonist's father.<br /><br /><a name='more'></a>Much to mean girl Kate's frustration, Callum has kept her at a safe distance since the death of her mother in what we can't help but suspect might have been more than a tragic accident:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">At first, she'd pleaded an begged to come home, to stay home, but over time, she stopped. Not because she stopped wanting it, but because she learned that pleading didn't work on Callum Harker. Pleading was a sign of weakness. So she learned to bury the things that made her weak. The things that made her like her mother.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">Kate returned the picture frame to the bedside table and looked down at her hands. Her lungs hurt from the smoke but her hands had stopped shaking, and she considered the black blood staining her fingers, not with horror but with grim determination.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">She was her father's daughter. A Harker.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">And she would do whatever she had to do to prove it. (p.138)</blockquote>By no means the worst of the things Kate has to do to demonstrate her value to her father is take her schooling seriously—so off to Colton Academy she goes, determined to dominate her classmates as she one day will the weaklings living on the North side of V-City.<br /><br />August, in the interim, has been going a bit stir-crazy stuck in the fortress Henry has made of his home, so, a plea or three for some form of freedom later, he's given a false name and dispatched to the aforementioned academy. He's under instruction to keep a close eye on Kate in the hope that it'll give the Flynns a little extra leverage in the event that the tenuous truce between their powerful parents' breaks... but screw the stakes. With so much in common, and such great expectations on both of their shoulders, oddball August and Harker's hellion become fast friends instead of arch enemies:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">He was a Sunai—nothing was going to change that—but he wasn't evil, wasn't cruel, wasn't monstrous. He was just someone who wanted to be something else, something he wasn't. &nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">Kate understood the feeling. (p.342)</blockquote>Schwab stops short of stating that Kate and August are properly star-cross'd, and as I touched on at the start of this dance, <i>This Savage Song </i>is no paranormal romance—that said, the Monsters of Verity has only just begun, and the factors of fate and family so central to Shakespeare's amorous tragedy have pivotal parts to play in all that follows, as this supernatural coming of age tale gives way to a propulsively paced chase and escape that turns from thrilling to chilling in an instant.<br /><br /><i>This Savage Song</i>'s emotional story&nbsp;is especially successful because the author does such a damn fine job of layering depth and complexity upon her central characters before leaving them at the last in the line of fire.<br /><br />Kate is a tearaway, to be sure, but she's confused, too—about a certain something that happened in the past, and about what she wants from the future, furthermore. It's understandable that she seeks her father's approval, but she's human enough to know that he's a bad man, so the terrible things she does to impress him, she does with her eyes wide open.<br /><br />August, on the other hand, is a bit of an innocent, being only four years old. He wants nothing but the best for everyone, yet there's a hunger in him; an all-encompassing hunger he struggles so hard to hold back in spite of the knowledge that the wall he's built around it <i>will </i>fall. The question isn't if, it's when—and who'll be beneath it?<br /><br />Schwab's world comes together wonderfully as well. Never mind how neat the idea animating it is, that monsters can only come to be because of our deeds, as aspects of "a cycle of whimpers and bangs, gruesome beginnings and bloody ends," (p.168) though it is—neat, I mean: how she follows through with a fascinating infrastructure built around the existence of these three lethal species is <i>This Savage Song</i>'s real&nbsp;<i>pièce de résistance</i>.<br /><br />Now not everything about the first volume of the Monsters of Verity&nbsp;lands so solidly. There's a predictable conspiracy capped off by a betrayal that means next to nothing to us, and an exponential over-egging of the musical motif that the title touches on—but the fact that the song goes on too long doesn't mean the thing isn't worth singing. Indeed, these slight oversights hardly detract from the overall impact of Schwab's newest novel, which delivers on so much of its sonorous promise that I thrill at the thought of an encore performance.<br /><br /></div></div></div><div><div style="text-align: center;">***</div></div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /><b>This Savage Song</b><br />by V. E. Schwab<br /><br />UK Publication: June 2016, Titan<br />US Publication: July 2016, Greenwillow<br /><br />Buy this book from<br /><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1785652745/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1634&amp;creative=19450&amp;creativeASIN=1785652745&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=thespecscot-21" target="_blank">Amazon.co.uk</a>&nbsp;/&nbsp;<a href="http://www.amazon.com/This-Savage-Song-Monsters-Verity/dp/0062380850/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1464613489&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=This+Savage+Song+by+V.+E.+Schwab&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-20&amp;linkId=43f8536fe0f4f54f1aedc3068cb66156" target="_blank">Amazon.com</a><br /><a href="http://www.bookdepository.com/book/9781785652745/?a_aid=scotspec" target="_blank">The Book Depository</a><br /><br />Or get&nbsp;<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01FGP5G9S/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1634&amp;creative=19450&amp;creativeASIN=B01FGP5G9S&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=thespecscot-21" target="_blank">the Kindle edition</a><br /><i><br /></i><i>Recommended and Related Reading</i><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1783295406/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1634&amp;creative=19450&amp;creativeASIN=1783295406&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=thespecscot-21" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-mNkcqcrv27s/V0w850WoLOI/AAAAAAAAO_k/KZqOl3NQlykE-P-wLnbmzutGN-bH-ywygCLcB/s200/adarkershade-uk.jpg" width="128" /></a><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0316464279/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1634&amp;creative=19450&amp;creativeASIN=0316464279&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=thespecscot-21" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-WWpTFGPBPqo/V0w83chmSKI/AAAAAAAAO_g/OVpZk61d4_sG2DXsTgeRvlBJF26FGIWEACLcB/s200/strangethedreamer-uk.jpg" width="129" /></a><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1473212553/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1634&amp;creative=19450&amp;creativeASIN=1473212553&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=thespecscot-21" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-sCGFs_dmelU/V0w8-aM-NTI/AAAAAAAAO_o/qLfciMVE4kgBN_UVk2Zh6dqtSI8ApnvOQCLcB/s200/shatteredwings-uk.jpg" width="123" /></a></div></div>http://scotspec.blogspot.com/2016/07/book-review-this-savage-song-by-v-e.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Niall Alexander)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6498739347909985243.post-2012801460262235508Mon, 18 Jul 2016 13:00:00 +00002016-07-18T14:00:06.981+01:00body horrorbook reviewClive BarkerdetectivesHellraisermash-upsmurder mysteriesPaul KaneSherlock HolmesSherlock Holmes and the Servants of HellBook Review | Sherlock Holmes and the Servants of Hell by Paul Kane<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-k7u1pNM7dLk/V16WNPp_YMI/AAAAAAAAPBQ/5-Ugq2gRvRYi7xra0K1ZKWgyunBjtgt5wCLcB/s1600/servantsofhell.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-k7u1pNM7dLk/V16WNPp_YMI/AAAAAAAAPBQ/5-Ugq2gRvRYi7xra0K1ZKWgyunBjtgt5wCLcB/s400/servantsofhell.jpg" width="263" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>Late 1895. Sherlock Holmes and his faithful companion Dr John Watson are called upon to investigate a missing persons case. On the face of it, this seems like a mystery that Holmes might relish, as the person in question vanished from a locked room. But this is just the start of an investigation that will draw the pair into contact with a shadowy organisation talked about in whispers, known only as the Order of the Gash.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>As more people go missing in a similar fashion, the clues point to a sinister asylum in France and to the underworld of London. However, it is an altogether different underworld that Holmes will soon discover—as he comes face to face not only with those followers who do the Order’s bidding on Earth, but those who serve it in Hell: the Cenobites.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>***</i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><br /></i></div><div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: justify;">The great detective applies his inimitable intellect to a murder mystery like none other in <i>Sherlock Holmes and the Servants of Hell</i>, a surprisingly credible commingling of Arthur Conan Doyle's classic characters and the soul-shredding subjects of <i>The Scarlet Gospels</i>. That's right, readers: Clive Barker's Cenobites are back—and they may actually have met their match.<br /><br />Holmes himself has seen better days, I dare say. In the wake of the great hiatus, during which period he disappeared to mess with his nemesis, he's alive and relatively well, but without the dastardly Moriarty to match wits with, he's grown a bit bored. And as Dr Watson warns:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">When Holmes grew bored, it was usually only a matter of time before he took up his old habit of drug use [...] however his penchant for his seven-percent solution of cocaine, administered via a needle he kept locked away in a polished Morocco box, was the least of my concerns after he returned, it transpired.</blockquote>The black dog of Holmes' habit is troubling, to be sure, but still more worrisome to Watson is the fact that his closest acquaintance's "malaise was gaining momentum." Said detective is dismissing fascinating cases with no explanation and plying his elementary trade in plague-ridden areas. "If these were in fact efforts to feel something, to feel alive," Watson worries, "then they might well kill the man instead."<br /><br />It's a relief, then, that "this dangerous road he was heading down: this terrible testing of himself" seems to cease when a couple come knocking on the door of 221B Baker Street. Laurence Cotton's brother Francis has gone missing, is the thing, and the police aren't taking his disappearance seriously—despite the screams the housekeeper heard emerge from the loft he was last seen locking.<br /><br />At the scene of the could-be crime, our chums uncover a void in the decades-old dust that suggests the involvement of a small box, and soon scent "an&nbsp;odd smell of vanilla" masking an undercurrent of what must be blood. From just this, Holmes is convinced that Francis has fallen victim to some dark deed indeed, but the mechanics of his murder are mysterious—as is the motive of the killer or killers—and that comes to fascinate a fellow famed for his ability to explain anything.<br /><br /><a name='more'></a>So it is that&nbsp;<i>Sherlock Holmes and the Servants of Hell</i> starts with "a seemingly ordinary case of a missing person," but this is just the beginning of "something that would open up a puzzle which would find Holmes stretched to his capacity; that would uncover a conspiracy only whispered about, and inconceivable to anyone of a right mind."<br /><br />Of course, Holmes <i>isn't </i>in his right mind at the time of this tale, so when at last he learns of the Lament Configuration—the elaborate contraption that summons the Cenobites in the <i>Hellraiser </i>books and movies—he isn't simply going to leave it be, is he? Instead, he sends Watson off to France—ostensibly to investigate the box's origins but really to have him out of harm's way—and sets about opening a doorway into hell itself.<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">Holmes wasn't a particularly religious soul, and up until now he had been now great believer in the supernatural—but he trusted logic and the evidence of his own eyes. As he'd once said, "once you eliminate the impossible, <i>whatever </i>remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth."&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">What happened, though, if the truth turned out to <i>be </i>the impossible?</blockquote>Why, the second half of&nbsp;<i>Sherlock Holmes and the Servants of Hell </i>happens, wherein we bear witness to an escalating battle between a pair of diametrically opposed forces—namely Doyle's&nbsp;resolutely rational&nbsp;characters and the darkly fantastical proponents of pain Clive Barker breech-birthed in&nbsp;<i>The Books of Blood</i>.<br /><br />The authenticity of Kane's take on Hell itself, and its inhabitants, is a scant surprise considering his years of attendant experience, as, among other things, co-editor of <i>Hellbound Hearts</i>—from which anthology he borrows several of the more striking Cenobites who have their wicked way with Holmes and his here—and author of <i>The Hellraiser Films and Their Legacy</i>, a scholarly study of the themes and ideas explored in said series.<br /><br />Markedly more startling is the conviction Kane brings to his depiction of the great detective and friends. Though the sections of the story necessarily narrated from Sherlock's perspective are less impressive, and I could have done without the incessantly suggestive sentences that cap each chapter, Watson's account is otherwise wonderful, with all the "colour and life" of the original writer's romanticised renditions. Kane even takes pains to stitch his story into that patchwork of narrative, such that it is as cleverly couched in canon as Anthony Horowitz's excellent official additions.<br /><br />That's not going to be enough to bring the die-hard Doyle devotees around to this inherently infernal affair, but then, <i>Sherlock Holmes and the Servants of Hell </i>was never meant for them. Less demanding fans are, however, apt to have a blast, and for the folks who felt that <i>The Scarlet Gospels </i>did a disservice to Barker's malevolent milieu, it really is just what the doctor ordered: a whole bunch of bloody fun.<br /><br /></div></div></div><div><div style="text-align: center;">***</div></div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /><b>Sherlock Holmes and the Servants of Hell</b><br />by Paul Kane<br /><br />UK &amp; US Publication: July 2016, Solaris<br /><br />Buy this book from<br /><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1781084548/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1634&amp;creative=19450&amp;creativeASIN=1781084548&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=thespecscot-21" target="_blank">Amazon.co.uk</a>&nbsp;/&nbsp;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Sherlock-Holmes-Servants-Hell-Paul/dp/1781084556/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1465816537&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=Sherlock+Holmes+and+the+Servants+of+Hell+by+Paul+Kane&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-20&amp;linkId=011a9921ecd48dfacc6442d28df09d01" target="_blank">Amazon.com</a><br /><a href="http://www.bookdepository.com/book/9781781084540/?a_aid=scotspec" target="_blank">The Book Depository</a><br /><br />Or get&nbsp;<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01G5WFCSQ/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1634&amp;creative=19450&amp;creativeASIN=B01G5WFCSQ&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=thespecscot-21" target="_blank">the Kindle edition</a><br /><i><br /></i><i>Recommended and Related Reading</i><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1781082219/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1634&amp;creative=19450&amp;creativeASIN=1781082219&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=thespecscot-21" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-SesXugaoRJY/V16ijfG3VwI/AAAAAAAAPBg/IIego5pfcwwUIk6btbYVCvBq45ZU0rgNgCLcB/s200/221bakerstreets.jpg" width="130" /></a><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1439140901/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1634&amp;creative=19450&amp;creativeASIN=1439140901&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=thespecscot-21" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-aNVMHVU8WLQ/V16imU3WfGI/AAAAAAAAPBw/EqAHDCdC82440SLuJhWj_pSpbakIjZSCwCLcB/s200/hellboundhearts.jpg" width="128" /></a><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1250056179/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1634&amp;creative=19450&amp;creativeASIN=1250056179&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=thespecscot-21" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YdgOQrcw6g4/V16ilF4nfGI/AAAAAAAAPBo/LDg5pEOKa9s7wew_J0VpcIgW_Trj7D42gCLcB/s200/scarletgospels-pb.jpg" width="133" /></a></div></div>http://scotspec.blogspot.com/2016/07/book-review-sherlock-holmes-and.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Niall Alexander)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6498739347909985243.post-6136771440753148150Mon, 11 Jul 2016 13:00:00 +00002016-07-11T14:00:19.541+01:00book reviewdebutsEzekiel Boonehorrorspidersthe end of the world againThe Hatchingthrillersunnatural disastersBook Review | The Hatching by Ezekiel Boone<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-pCSZruHHsLk/V2Pb4SboX9I/AAAAAAAAPCg/AFgKuODTL3cE_z7DHyqGcWkGiH75IimAACLcB/s1600/hatching-uk.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-pCSZruHHsLk/V2Pb4SboX9I/AAAAAAAAPCg/AFgKuODTL3cE_z7DHyqGcWkGiH75IimAACLcB/s320/hatching-uk.jpg" width="207" /></a><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-PWvxLYZMVv4/V2Pb3xjzCcI/AAAAAAAAPCc/zN2GgH701C8OlvHHgAnONy1CMbiCBhIpwCLcB/s1600/hatching-us.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-PWvxLYZMVv4/V2Pb3xjzCcI/AAAAAAAAPCc/zN2GgH701C8OlvHHgAnONy1CMbiCBhIpwCLcB/s320/hatching-us.jpg" width="210" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>Deep in the jungle of Peru, a black, skittering mass devours an American tourist party whole. FBI agent Mike Rich investigates a fatal plane crash in Minneapolis and makes a gruesome discovery. Unusual seismic patterns register in a Indian earthquake lab, confounding the scientists there. The Chinese government "accidentally" drops a nuclear bomb in an isolated region of its own country. The first female president of the United States is summoned to an emergency briefing. And all of these events are connected.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>As panic begins to sweep the globe, a mysterious package from South America arrives at Melanie Guyer's Washington laboratory. The unusual egg inside begins to crack.&nbsp;</i><i>A virulent ancient species, long dormant, is now very much awake. But this is only the beginning of our end...</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>***</i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><br /></i></div><div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: justify;">In recent years, apocalyptic fiction has gotten pretty political. Where once it was the preserve of the firmly fantastical or the nominally natural, like the rampaging rats of James Herbert's unforgettable first novel, or Michael Crichton's reconditioned dinosaurs,&nbsp;such stories have since taken a turn for the topical. Now we have nuclear winters to worry about, a cache of climate catastrophes, and the release of diseases&nbsp;genetically engineered&nbsp;to "solve" the planet's overpopulation problems. For those of us who read to escape the devastation of the day-to-day, it's all gotten uncomfortably current.<br /><br />Happily, <i>The Hatching </i>hearkens back to the detached disasters of yesteryear. The end of the world as we know it isn't even our own fault in Ezekiel Boone's book—it comes about because of some damned spiders:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">There are thirty-five thousand species of spiders and they've been on earth for at least three hundred million years. From the very origin of humanity, spiders have been out there, scuttling along the edges of firelight, spinning webs in the woods, and scaring the hell out of us, even though, with a few rare exceptions, they are no real threat. But these were something different.</blockquote>These spiders are more like ants, in fact, in that they're essentially social: what they do, they do for the good of the group as opposed to their own individual ends, which means they can set their collective sights on bigger and better prey than bluebottles. Creepy as one arachnid is, in other words, it's got nothing on a sea of the beasties with an appetite for people.<br /><br />But we're getting ahead of ourselves—a lesson Boone would do well to learn, because before the inevitable rise of the spiders, he gets bogged down in setting up a situation for them to chew through, and sadly, it isn't up to snuff, largely because it relies on a cast of conspicuously cartoonish characters.<br /><br />Of these, there are those whose only role in the whole is to be summarily dispatched so as to show that the aforementioned arachnids are the real deal. That's clear—and effective, yes—the first time a spider eats its way out of one of their forgettable faces; by the fifth time someone is dispatched in that fashion, it's gotten a bit boring, and alas,&nbsp;<i>The Hatching </i>has hardly started.<br /><br /><a name='more'></a>The survivors at the centre of the text—such as Lance Corporal Kim Bock, FBI agent Mike Rich, arachnid expert Melanie Guyer, President Stephanie Pilgrim and Manny, her chief of staff—are more memorable than the other lambs the author sends to the slaughter simply because they last a little longer, but that's about all they have going for them. That, and the fact that they're all supremely sardonic, altogether awesome at their jobs, and, in the interim, "effortlessly attractive," "athletic," or else "the sexiest." Pardon me—some of them are simply "pretty."<br /><br />In real terms, they're represented with kind of depth you'd expect from an off-Hollywood casting call. And indeed, <i>The Hatching </i>as a whole could conceivably be a script rejected by the Syfy channel and retooled as a book; it's very visual, dialogue- rather than exposition-driven, and what little of the latter there is is markedly more interested in how cool a swarm of spiders would look than in the internal complexities of the characters caught in such spots:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">It looked to Miguel like a black river. [...] And then the blackness started streaming toward him, covering the path and moving quickly, almost as fast as a man could run. Miguel knew he should be running, but there was something hypnotic in the quietness of the water. It didn't roar like a river. If anything, it seemed to absorb sound. All he could hear was a whisper, a skittering, like a small patter of rain. The way the river moved was beautiful in its own way, pulsing and, at certain points, splitting and braiding into separate streams before rejoining itself a few paces later. As it got closer, Miguel took another step back, but by the time he realised it wasn't actually a river, that it wasn't water of any kind, it was too late.</blockquote>But you know what? I enjoyed the&nbsp;shenanigans in <i>Sharknado </i>as much as the next person, and as such, I did have some fun with&nbsp;<i>The Hatching&nbsp;</i>in hand. Just because it doesn't have the deeper meaning most apocalyptic novels do these days doesn't mean the throwback disaster it documents isn't intermittently thrilling, and although its shallow central characters might disappear into the ether if Boone ever took them out of their respective elements, they're perfectly&nbsp;fit—for purpose, in the first, but also in terms of their, ah... hot bods.<br /><br />I could find it in my heart to live with the fact that there's not a lot to <i>The Hatching </i>as a narrative, but even as brief, beach-side reading, there's not nearly enough of it to really recommend. "Basically, nobody knows what's going on" for most of the novel, then it ends just as folks are figuring out what's been staring us in the face from the first page.<br /><br />What we're left with, at the last, is a superficial story that spends its length establishing a premise that isn't at all hard to get your head around and a cast of caricatures even the most devoted popular fiction fans be hard pressed to remember after this slow opener's over. As the author asserts, it is "just the beginning," but <i>The Hatching </i>doesn't give readers a great many reasons to be interested in the middle.</div></div></div><div><div style="text-align: center;">***</div></div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /><b>The Hatching</b><br />by Ezekiel Boone<br /><br />UK Publication: July 2016, Gollancz<br />US Publication: July 2016, Atria<br /><br />Buy this book from<br /><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hatching-Ezekiel-Boone/dp/147321517X/ref=as_li_ss_tl?_encoding=UTF8&amp;qid=1466161853&amp;sr=8-1&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-21&amp;linkId=ac3cd187924e4d4f4f88d0b09cd9387d" target="_blank">Amazon.co.uk</a>&nbsp;/&nbsp;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Hatching-Novel-Ezekiel-Boone/dp/1501125044/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1466161890&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=hatching+boone&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-20&amp;linkId=ac9cc3b8797f40e6d52ba8f94e7fb6b1" target="_blank">Amazon.com</a><br /><a href="http://www.bookdepository.com/book/9781473215177/?a_aid=scotspec" target="_blank">The Book Depository</a><br /><br />Or get&nbsp;<a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hatching-Ezekiel-Boone-ebook/dp/B01BT3Z9XY/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1466161853&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=the+hatching&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-21&amp;linkId=343ab1620667a90d0f0f0c1fd0a72d7b" target="_blank">the Kindle edition</a><br /><i><br /></i><i>Recommended and Related Reading</i><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Rats-James-Herbert/dp/1447264509/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1466607760&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=the+rats&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-21&amp;linkId=61701e1fe267e40e874bca8d1991ef79" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-MDIRA_TkrSg/V2qpFDV6QWI/AAAAAAAAPDI/d0dMLZ62c2kdjAS73EQwv35NclaEAe6bQCLcB/s200/rats-uk.jpg" width="130" /></a><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Three-Sarah-Lotz/dp/1444770381/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;dpID=41fJpid8ePL&amp;dpSrc=sims&amp;preST=_AC_UL160_SR104,160_&amp;psc=1&amp;refRID=10A4E0MGHP4R2CN3J79Z&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-21&amp;linkId=cee93d1ace3b5d591ccf2c3e9d52cf3f" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-KoOEyngfeWg/V2qpDe0ogxI/AAAAAAAAPDE/nWNrn5FawEccKnwt0GCQV_SPTJXodb29QCLcB/s200/three-pb.jpg" width="130" /></a><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Troop-Nick-Cutter/dp/147220624X/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;psc=1&amp;refRID=9KA4HTM2P4JTW9MXMQFV&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-21&amp;linkId=e681d394cef0a84e32fb071c1c82cb11" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-FsDbPHQP7KY/V2qpGIeexgI/AAAAAAAAPDU/rdS4WISXe70SB5czIIVGaobU2dh0GfUpgCLcB/s200/troop-uk.jpg" width="130" /></a></div></div>http://scotspec.blogspot.com/2016/07/book-review-hatching-by-ezekiel-boone.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Niall Alexander)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6498739347909985243.post-3479114473420808639Mon, 13 Jun 2016 13:00:00 +00002016-06-13T14:00:37.064+01:00book reviewEnd of WatchMr Mercedesmurder mysteriespossessionserial killersStephen KingtelekinesisthrillersBook Review | End of Watch by Stephen King<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-QbGJvTpDk9Q/Vz2n_io8OsI/AAAAAAAAO-s/Ok7oJR1x7WAhsfeY8RQPt8baP88T8Q6PgCLcB/s1600/endofwatch-uk.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-QbGJvTpDk9Q/Vz2n_io8OsI/AAAAAAAAO-s/Ok7oJR1x7WAhsfeY8RQPt8baP88T8Q6PgCLcB/s320/endofwatch-uk.jpg" width="208" /></a><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-m_1WePMW-dY/Vz2n_nOusFI/AAAAAAAAO-w/gWXa80y2KGkAbIcMWCC9WUJAeqY9RNLcQCLcB/s1600/endofwatch-us.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-m_1WePMW-dY/Vz2n_nOusFI/AAAAAAAAO-w/gWXa80y2KGkAbIcMWCC9WUJAeqY9RNLcQCLcB/s320/endofwatch-us.jpg" width="210" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>Retired Detective Bill Hodges now runs a two-person firm called Finders Keepers with his partner Holly Gibney. They met in the wake of the Mercedes Massacre, when a queue of people was run down by the diabolical killer Brady Hartsfield.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>Brady is now confined to Room 217 of the Lakes Region Traumatic Brain Injury Clinic, in an unresponsive state. But all is not what it seems: the evidence suggests that Brady is somehow awake, and in possession of deadly new powers that allow him to wreak unimaginable havoc without ever leaving his hospital room.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>When Bill and Holly are called to a suicide scene with ties to the Mercedes Massacre, they find themselves pulled into their most dangerous case yet, one that will put their lives at risk, as well as those of Bill's heroic young friend Jerome Robinson and his teenage sister, Barbara. Brady Hartsfield is back, and planning revenge not just on Hodges and his friends, but on an entire city.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>The clock is ticking in unexpected ways...</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>***</i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><br /></i></div><div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: justify;">The Bill Hodges trilogy that began with the Edgar Award-winning <i>Mr Mercedes </i>and continued in last year's fearsome <i>Finders Keepers </i>comes to an uncharacteristically concise close in <i>End of Watch</i>, a finale which finds Stephen King's determined old det-ret racing against the clock to get to the bottom of a string of suicides he thinks could be linked to the malignant mind behind the Mercedes Massacre:</div><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">On a foggy morning in 2009, a maniac named Brady Hartsfield drove a stolen Mercedes Benz into a crowd of job-seekers at City Center, downtown. He killed eight and seriously injured fifteen. [...] Martine Stover had been the toughest [survivor] to talk to, and not only because her disfigured mouth made her all but impossible to understand for anyone except her mother. Stover was paralysed from the chest down. (p.16)</blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;">The adjustment has been damned difficult, but in the seven years since the incident, Martine has come to terms with her limited mobility. She and her mother, who stepped up to the plate in the wake of that darkest of dates, have grown closer than ever before. They've been, by all accounts, happy—hard as that might for some outsiders to imagine—and happy people don't force overdoses on their dearly beloved daughters then takes cannisters of gas into the bath, do they?</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Because of Hodges' history with Hartsfield, he and his recalcitrant partner Holly Gibney are, as a courtesy, invited to see the scene of what the police are keen to call a murder-suicide, and although the evidence in support of that theory is clear, when our PIs find a Zappit—a budget-brand tablet Hodges has seen the object of his obsession play with in the past—they can't help but suspect a connection.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">But how could Mr Mercedes be involved in the deaths of Martine Stover and Janice Ellerton when he's basically brain-dead himself?<br /><br /><a name='more'></a></div><blockquote class="tr_bq">Whatever happened in that home at the end of Hilltop Court—the chain of thoughts and conversations, of tears and promises, all ending in the dissolved pills injected into the feeding tube and the tank of helium with the laughing children decaled on the side—it can have nothing to do with Brady Hartsfield, because Holly literally bashed his brains out. If Hodges sometimes doubts, it's because he can't stand the idea that Brady has somehow escaped punishment. That in the end, the monster eluded him. (pp.39-40)</blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;">And perhaps there's some truth to that—some truth and even a touch of justice to our det-ret's desire to ensure that Hartsfield, having done the crime, does the time. But remember, readers, the last scene of <i>Finders Keepers</i>: a break in the straight story King had told to date in which Mr Mercedes seemed to express his feelings through, of all things, telekinesis.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">For good or for ill, <i>End of Watch</i> doubles down on that then-unexpected direction:</div><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">Her final doubts are swept away and she knows for sure. [...] It's Brady, all right. He's become a living Russian nesting doll, which goes perfectly with his furry Russian hat. Look inside Babineau and there's Dr Z. Look inside Dr Z, and there, pulling all the levers, is Brady Hartsfield. God knows how it can be, but it is. (p.195)</blockquote>And that's kind of... it. Hartsfield has no control over his own body, so, somehow, he's started hijacking the bodies of passers-by to do his dirty work: work which involves inciting the seeming suicides of the several thousand survivors of his various attacks way back.<br /><br />Oddly for an author so closely associated with the supernatural, Stephen King's naturalistic narratives have been among his most magical. When for whatever reason he can't lean on the MacGuffins he so often uses to sustain his stories, he has to work that much harder to make them in some sense momentous, and this, I think, brings out the best in King as a creator—see last year's <i>Finders Keepers</i>, which for my money holds&nbsp;up against even <i>Different Seasons</i>.<br /><br />The former book's conclusion gave us fair warning where <i>End of Watch </i>was going to go, granted, but even so, if you're going to introduce something speculative into a world arranged around the idea that every event can be explained, you have to at least give a reason why the rules have summarily changed. And alas, King doesn't do a great job of squaring up the supernatural elements of <i>End of Watch </i>with the unaffected suspense of&nbsp;<i>Mr Mercedes&nbsp;</i>and its superior sequel. It feels, frankly, like he simply gave in to temptation, and I'm no happier about that than I would have been if, for example, Katniss Everdeen had suddenly developed superpowers during the last act of <i>Catching Fire</i>.<br /><br /><i>End of Watch </i>isn't especially welcoming to new readers either. There's a little recap here and a bit of explanation there, such that folks unfamiliar with the other Bill Hodges novels will have enough knowledge of the plot to follow along, but they'll miss out on the perversely intimate history that justifies the dynamic between&nbsp;between our hero and Hartsfield, and sadly, divorced as they are from their earlier development, the story's supporting characters are apt to come across as caricatures.<br /><br />But if, like me, you're a returning reader, and you're willing, as well, to swallow the mind-control medicine,&nbsp;<i>End of Watch&nbsp;</i>does satisfactorily wrap up the Bill Hodges trilogy. King gets the band back together in time for at least one last hurrah—and it's a pleasure to watch them perform—before hurling all involved headlong towards an ending that had me on the edge of my seat. Thus, though&nbsp;<i>End of Watch </i>is the least of the three books of the series it completes, it bears repeating that its predecessors have been exceptional.<br /><br /></div></div><div><div style="text-align: center;">***</div></div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /><b>End of Watch</b><br />by Stephen King<br /><br />UK Publication: June 2016, Hodder<br />US Publication: June 2016, Scribner<br /><br />Buy this book from<br /><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1473634008/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1634&amp;creative=19450&amp;creativeASIN=1473634008&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=thespecscot-21" target="_blank">Amazon.co.uk</a>&nbsp;/&nbsp;<a href="http://www.amazon.com/End-Watch-Novel-Hodges-Trilogy/dp/1501129740/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1463658011&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=end+of+watch+king&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-20&amp;linkId=0b6b81a4e2f338ee6532bc706e3d717c" target="_blank">Amazon.com</a><br /><a href="http://www.bookdepository.com/book/9781473634008/?a_aid=scotspec" target="_blank">The Book Depository</a><br /><br />Or get&nbsp;<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B016IOF9UM/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1634&amp;creative=19450&amp;creativeASIN=B016IOF9UM&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=thespecscot-21" target="_blank">the Kindle edition</a><br /><i><br /></i><i>Recommended and Related Reading</i><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1473698952/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1634&amp;creative=19450&amp;creativeASIN=1473698952&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=thespecscot-21" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Pjgtonpe6Zs/Vz2nrAUfONI/AAAAAAAAO-k/Lh5fZ4LAScsE8aWKQGgIpQAA7OK6jxEGACLcB/s200/finderskeepers-pb.jpg" width="130" /></a><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1616961910/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1634&amp;creative=19450&amp;creativeASIN=1616961910&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=thespecscot-21" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-c1eCvlQWAFM/Vz2nqDvSueI/AAAAAAAAO-g/utT_i3CLa34LFasyZ24KI-GjVAQjSiJsACLcB/s200/hapandleonard.jpg" width="129" /></a><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1444742612/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1634&amp;creative=19450&amp;creativeASIN=1444742612&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=thespecscot-21" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bW9gbiU6BfA/Vz2nt-3JPUI/AAAAAAAAO-o/TjYbPuQpphIyzZzUruP2mTGYdvozpmVCACLcB/s200/lastwords.jpg" width="130" /></a></div></div>http://scotspec.blogspot.com/2016/06/book-review-end-of-watch-by-stephen-king.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Niall Alexander)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6498739347909985243.post-7774128275729883466Thu, 09 Jun 2016 13:00:00 +00002016-06-09T14:00:20.430+01:00apocalyptic fictionbook reviewJoe Hilllove storiessurvival horrorthe end of the world againThe FiremanBook Review | The Fireman by Joe Hill<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-l8-JUiHeTfU/VycnR3gPJkI/AAAAAAAAO6I/G-amv1ICF2YmrYPOiqZjoF-fM1DtnCCEACLcB/s1600/fireman-uk.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-l8-JUiHeTfU/VycnR3gPJkI/AAAAAAAAO6I/G-amv1ICF2YmrYPOiqZjoF-fM1DtnCCEACLcB/s320/fireman-uk.jpg" width="207" /></a><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-mfHh5UPCwFY/VycnRunQ3qI/AAAAAAAAO6E/jm5tGZFjcEkKnSpzqYT6PYivmdNkS4dsgCLcB/s1600/fireman-us.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-mfHh5UPCwFY/VycnRunQ3qI/AAAAAAAAO6E/jm5tGZFjcEkKnSpzqYT6PYivmdNkS4dsgCLcB/s320/fireman-us.jpg" width="211" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>No one knows exactly when it began or where it originated. A terrifying new plague is spreading like wildfire across the country, striking cities one by one: Boston, Detroit, Seattle. The doctors call it Draco Incendia Trychophyton. To everyone else it’s Dragonscale, a highly contagious, deadly spore that marks its hosts with beautiful black and gold marks across their bodies—before causing them to burst into flames. Millions are infected; blazes erupt everywhere. There is no antidote. No one is safe.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>Harper Grayson, a compassionate, dedicated nurse as pragmatic as Mary Poppins, treated hundreds of infected patients before her hospital burned to the ground. Now she’s discovered the telltale gold-flecked marks on her skin. When the outbreak first began, she and her husband, Jakob, had made a pact: they would take matters into their own hands if they became infected. To Jakob’s dismay, Harper wants to live—at least until the unborn child she is carrying comes to term.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><i>***</i></div><div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />Unlike some, I have a soft spot for <i>Heart-Shaped Box</i>,<i>&nbsp;</i>and a lot of love for <i>Horns</i>, but even I'd agree that <i>NOS4A2 </i>is Joe Hill's strongest novel—not least, I believe, because it's also his longest. The larger than life-sized story it told and the complex characters explored over its engrossing course simply couldn't have come to be without the room to breathe its length allowed, so when I found out <i>The Fireman&nbsp;</i>was similarly thick, I was pleased.<br /><br />And it's an awesome novel, naturally: an apocalyptic parable written from the perspective of an infectiously happy heroine every millimetre as meaty and memorable as Ms. Vic McQueen, and whose hellish ex gives Charles Talent Manx a run for his money. But for all that&nbsp;<i>The Fireman&nbsp;</i>kicks off brilliantly and ends tremendously well, the middle section of the text—an epic in and of itself—tends towards the plodding and the predictable.<br /><br />It begins with the world burning.<br /><br />It's been burning for months, as a matter of fact, but only "in filthy places no one wants to go," you know. So sayeth Harper Grayson's asshole of a husband. And it's true that the first recorded cases of&nbsp;<i>Draco Incendia Trychophyto</i>—a spore that marks its hosts with gorgeous golden growths before causing them to suddenly combust—it's true, at least according to the news, that the so-called 'Scale originated elsewhere.<br /><br />Some say the Russians engineered it. Others insist on the involvement of ISIS, or, failing that, fundamentalists fixated on the book of Revelations. Truth be told, its source isn't so important, because the thing about fire is, it spreads—and with it, this incipient sickness. Before long, "fifteen million people are infected. Maine is like Mordor now," Harper has it: "a belt of ash and poison a hundred miles wide. Southern California is even worse. Last I heard, SoCal was on fire from Escondido to Santa Maria."<br /><br />With "her silliness and her sense of play and her belief that the kindnesses you showed other added up to something," said school nurse is just about the sweetest human being there's ever been, so whilst her increasingly hysterical other half hides, Harper helps, however she can. Alas, lending a hand at the local hospital leads to her developing symptoms of the 'Scale herself—just hours after she learns she's pregnant.<br /><br /><a name='more'></a>In short order, the father of the baby-to-be becomes convinced that he's also a host of the spore, and starts banging on about a suicide pact. Harper roundly, reasonably refuses, saying that whatever she'd agreed to previously, she wants to carry her son—she's sure it's a son—to term. In response, Jakob gets out his gun. He's about to blow her head off when the Fireman—a Mancunian called John Rookwood who created something of a scene in accident and emergency earlier—swoops in to save the day.<br /><br />"Sometimes I think&nbsp;<i>every&nbsp;</i>man wants to be a writer," Harper thinks out loud later:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">"They want to invent a world with the perfect imaginary woman, someone they can boss around and undress at will. They can work out their own aggression with a few fictional rape scenes. Then they can send their fictional surrogate in to save her, a white knight—or a fireman! Someone with all the power and all the agency. Real women, on the other hand, have all these tiresome interests of their own, and won't follow an outline."</blockquote>Imaginary though she may be, Harper reads as resoundingly real. As a woman "prone to whistling bits from 1960s musicals" who nurses "secret fantasies of being joined in song by helpful blue jays and cheeky robins," she certainly has her interests—interests that help her stay as positive as possible while the rest of North America goes to hell in an ashen casket. She has her dreams and she has her desires, her strengths and, indeed, her weaknesses... but she's no damned damsel in distress. She spends most of the rest of <i>The Fireman </i>saving the titular figure, in fact, rather than perpetuating the first phase of their relationship.<br /><br />Theirs is a relationship that grows, of course, as the story goes; as they spend time together in and around the grounds of Camp Wyndham, where,&nbsp;hidden away from a rising tide of aggression against the affected, a community of kindly cultists have learned of a way to stay the 'Scale. Not to control it, like the Fireman can—when he concentrates, he's able to conjure incredible creatures made of flame from thin air—but to be one with it in a blissed-out state the blighted call the Bright.<br /><br />"When you were in the Bright, everything felt good, everything felt&nbsp;<i>right</i>. You didn't walk. You danced. The world pulsed with secret song and you were the star of your own Technicolor musical." Which, sure, sounds lovely, especially to Disney devotees like Harper, but the sense that something of significance is amiss tempers the temptation to join the happy campers in sermon and so on. I'll let you figure out first-hand what that something is, however Hill has already given you a few allusive clues. Note that Camp Wyndham is named after the author of <i>The Midwich Cuckoos</i>, and that <i>The Fireman</i>, in the first,&nbsp;was the working title of a certain classic by Ray Bradbury.<br /><br />It's all a little obvious, to be honest—and frustrating, I'm afraid. I had an idea about what was going to happen to this close-knit community well before anyone in the novel acknowledged its ill-fated nature, and even when someone does cotton on, another several hundred pages pass before any of those expectations are addressed. In the interim, we're left to wrap our heads around a romance that often feels forced—never mind that Harper and John still have ties to their previous partners—and an attempted murder mystery that's nowhere near as mysterious as Hill clearly means for it to be.<br /><br />Yet even at its very lowest ebb, there remain a riot of reasons to recommend&nbsp;<i>The Fireman</i>. Hill's prose is refreshingly unpretentious, as lucid as it is likeable; he builds his not-so-wonderful worlds with little discernible effort; and makes breathing all the countless complexities of life into his heroes and villains alike look obscenely easy—a trio of traits I'd be remiss not to note his work has in common with his father's.<br /><br />Happily, his endings are far more satisfying than the elder King's, as Hill's fourth novel&nbsp;shows when it eventually gets going again. The last act of the narrative has all the tension and jeopardy that made the first so fearsome: characters we care about are placed in precarious situations that could develop in almost any direction, which makes the horror that follows—and I promise you: horror follows—all the more awful.<br /><br />There's no getting away from the monotony of the extended middle section, but <i>The Fireman</i>'s darkly fantastic finale sets so many wrongs right that though I may maintain <i>NOS4A2 </i>is still the best thing Joe Hill has written, there are some absolutely mind-blowing moments when this&nbsp;comes within spitting distance of eclipsing it.<br /><br /></div></div><div><div style="text-align: center;">***</div></div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /><b>The Fireman</b><br />by Joe Hill<br /><br />US Publication: June 2016, Gollancz<br />US Publication: May 2016, William Morrow<br /><br />Buy this book from<br /><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0575130717/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1634&amp;creative=19450&amp;creativeASIN=0575130717&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=thespecscot-21" target="_blank">Amazon.co.uk</a>&nbsp;/&nbsp;<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Fireman-Novel-Joe-Hill/dp/0062200631/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1462183618&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=The+Fireman+by+Joe+Hill&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-20&amp;linkId=c6f896cd7d038bc9b41dc15f619a6f7d" target="_blank">Amazon.com</a><br /><a href="http://www.bookdepository.com/book/9780575130722/?a_aid=scotspec" target="_blank">The Book Depository</a><br /><br />Or get&nbsp;<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B016P01YCQ/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1634&amp;creative=19450&amp;creativeASIN=B016P01YCQ&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=thespecscot-21" target="_blank">the Kindle edition</a><br /><i><br /></i><i>Recommended and Related Reading</i><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0575130695/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1634&amp;creative=19450&amp;creativeASIN=0575130695&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=thespecscot-21" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Zn5aku711EY/VycthkbXP_I/AAAAAAAAO6c/8RnxphnPxOc2mTO748n_e4Y2Z5SMT12agCLcB/s200/NOS4A2-pb.jpg" width="130" /></a><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0752897896/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1634&amp;creative=19450&amp;creativeASIN=0752897896&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=thespecscot-21" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/--QUKz33gh2g/VyctjeuaRUI/AAAAAAAAO6g/Pq0JpOiQOcYHAE7wzSrIPixATXLIpZEpgCLcB/s200/cityofmirrors-uk.jpg" width="130" /></a><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1444720732/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1634&amp;creative=19450&amp;creativeASIN=1444720732&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=thespecscot-21" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-kuo3KGhtq8k/VyctfKpbjGI/AAAAAAAAO6Y/pbgrOigUIRcLhCPP2PnuOPeARqEuvXB9wCLcB/s200/stand-pb.jpg" width="130" /></a></div></div>http://scotspec.blogspot.com/2016/06/book-review-fireman-by-joe-hill.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Niall Alexander)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6498739347909985243.post-7127998773823450571Tue, 07 Jun 2016 13:00:00 +00002016-06-07T14:00:26.411+01:00book reviewClaire NorthespionageidentitymemorysfThe Sudden Appearance of HopethrillersBook Review | The Sudden Appearance of Hope by Claire North<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-gzPinPhghQ8/VzBiUo7maqI/AAAAAAAAO84/X78fhtZPA04v7uxpcag3PLy9Ars4zjgJgCLcB/s1600/suddenappearanceofhope.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-gzPinPhghQ8/VzBiUo7maqI/AAAAAAAAO84/X78fhtZPA04v7uxpcag3PLy9Ars4zjgJgCLcB/s400/suddenappearanceofhope.jpg" width="258" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>My name is Hope Arden, and you won't know who I am. But we've met before—a thousand times.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>It started when I was sixteen years old.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>A father forgetting to drive me to school. A mother setting the table for three, not four. A friend who looks at me and sees a stranger.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>No matter what I do, the words I say, the crimes I commit, you will never remember who I am.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>That makes my life difficult. It also makes me dangerous</i>.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>***</i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><br /></i></div><div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;">Life is complicated—not least because it's so frickin' unpredictable. But there are a few things you can be sure of. One day, you and I will die; come what may, there'll be plenty of taxes to pay along the way; and, as Isaac Newton concluded,&nbsp;for every action,&nbsp;an equal and opposite reaction will happen.<br /><br />In real terms, that means that what we do dictates what is done to us. Hurt someone and you can expect to be hurt in turn. Make someone happy and perhaps they'll pay that happiness back. This behavioural balance relies on our ability to remember, however. Without that... well, what would you do if you knew the world would forget you?<br /><br />You'd let loose, wouldn't you?<br /><br />Hope Arden, for her part, does exactly that in Catherine Webb's third novel as Claire North, which, like&nbsp;<i>Touch&nbsp;</i>and&nbsp;<i>The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August&nbsp;</i>before it,&nbsp;is an engrossing, globe-trotting interrogation of identity that sits comfortably between Bourne and Buffy.<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">For a while after I'd been forgotten, I toyed with becoming a hitman. I pictured myself in leather jump suits, taking down my targets with a sniper rifle, my dark hair billowing in the wind. No cop could catch me; no one would know my name. I was sixteen years old, and had peculiar ideas about 'cool.'</blockquote>Peculiar, to be sure, but so is Hope's very particular predicament.<br /><br />You'd be forgiven for forgetting someone you see on the street; even someone you speak to, briefly. But neglect to remember your best mate and that relationship's in dire straits. Fail to recognise your son or your daughter and you've got a problem with a capital P. North's poor protagonist has had to deal with that every day since she came of age, in her every interaction with everyone she's ever met. Never mind the network of people she'd need to know her if she had a hope in hell of holding down a normal job: she's a complete stranger to her parents, and her closest friends look at her like an interloper.<br /><br />It's a credit to her character, then, that Hope—"having no one else to know me, having no one to catch me or lift me up, tell me if I'm right or wrong, having no one to define the limits of me"—still holds the sanctity of human life in high regard. So scratch that career as an assassin.<br /><br /><a name='more'></a>Instead, she uses her inimitable anonymity to steal. Merely to make ends meet, in the beginning; to pay her way in a world that won't notice in any case. But before long, she starts five-fingering bigger things—mayhap to make more of a mark. And she does... if only on paper. As of the offing of North's new novel, an inspector with Interpol has been hot on Hope's heels for years. He's even caught her on occasion. Alas for Luca Evard, "a good man" by any measure, even he has forgotten that fact.<br /><br />That said, there's hope for him yet, because one day, his quarry does something... unusually stupid. In the process of planning her next theft, she meets Reina bint Badr al Mustakfi, and in her, sees someone sweet and sad and overshadowed. Someone like Hope herself, in short. Someone whose sudden suicide makes all that follows intensely personal as opposed to professional.<br /><br />Had Hope spent a little longer looking into the organisation she holds responsible for Reina's unfortunate fate—the all-powerful owners and operators of a pervasive program called Perfection, which functions like a lifestyle-based Facebook—she'd surely have realised what she was up against and stayed a ways away, but nothing's going to stop her now. As planned, she nabs a necklace of diamonds from a party of Perfection's finest in Dubai, but when she comes to sell her prize on the black market, she finds herself in the line of fire of a man who goes by Gauguin and has none of Inspector Evard's integrity.<br /><br />Hope barely escapes the subsequent confrontation, but rather than running from the fire, she strides straight back into it when someone with a similarly vested interest in tearing Perfection apart pays her to purloin the software at its centre:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">It wasn't merely the £1.2 million that Byron promised upon completion of the job that gave me a sense of ease; it was the job itself.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">I was going to Tokyo to crack open the little piece of software that seemed to obsess both Byron and Gauguin, whose name had haunted me around my travels between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean. I was going to steal Perfection, and it was good.</blockquote>On the surface, <i>The Sudden Appearance of Hope</i> is the story of that job, and though there's a touch too much table-setting, it's a tense and twisting thing when it gets going, complete with regular reversals and revelations that raise the stakes at the same time as changing the goals of the dangerous game our tragic protagonist is playing.<br /><br />The emotional focal point of the fiction is Hope, of course, and her attempts to understand what's wrong with her, in order to either correct it, or accept it. Initially, she wants nothing more than to make herself memorable—not a problem for North, I'd note—and for all the repellent tenets it represents, Perfection offers her that possibility... but at what cost? What is she willing to sacrifice simply to stand a chance of being known by her mother or a lover? And if she was known, would she be wanted? These are questions Hope wrestles with repeatedly, and they ground her comprehensively conflicted character marvellously.<br /><br />The precarious situations she gets herself into in the interim, and somehow has to get herself out of again, would be more than enough to sustain most stories of this sort.&nbsp;But remember, readers dear: this is a Claire North novel. Claire North novels are shiny and exciting on the surface, sure, but they're also progressive and introspective—as chilling, invariably, as they are thrilling—and <i>The Sudden Appearance of Hope</i> is no exception in that respect.<br /><br />Not only does it underscore the superficial nature of the age we exist in, it also explores&nbsp;the notion of knowledge, sets its sights on the effects of hysteria, and—in extricating the present from the fug of the future by way of a perspective that lives only in the moment, a woman who is effectively "dead in all but deed"—exposes the absolute necessity of now.<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">I exist in this physical world as sure as stone, but in the world of men—in that world that is collective memory, in the dream-world where people find meaning, feeling, importance—I am a ghost. Only in the present tense am I real.</blockquote><i>The Sudden Appearance of Hope </i>is North's longest novel, if I'm not very much mistaken, and I suppose some of the seams between its many sections show. Most notably, the first third is thick with plot, and other than Hope herself,&nbsp;the narrative's other characters are nowhere to be seen until the second act starts.<br /><br />That's going to be too much for some, and not enough for others, but rest assured: North addresses both of these problems well before winningly bringing "all things [back] to where we had begun, back to Dubai, back to Reina, the summer sun and a bunch of stolen diamonds," and in every other significant sense,&nbsp;<i>The Sudden Appearance of Hope </i>is effectively unforgettable.<br /><br /></div></div><div><div style="text-align: center;">***</div></div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /><b>The Sudden Appearance of Hope</b><br />by Claire North<br /><br />UK &amp; US Publication: May 2016, Orbit<br /><br />Buy this book from<br /><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0356504522/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1634&amp;creative=19450&amp;creativeASIN=0356504522&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=thespecscot-21" target="_blank">Amazon.co.uk</a>&nbsp;/&nbsp;<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Sudden-Appearance-Hope-Claire-North/dp/0316335991/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1462788017&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=The+Sudden+Appearance+of+Hope+by+Claire+North&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-20&amp;linkId=c316fbda0709ae2c84ab7fc3838a8a10" target="_blank">Amazon.com</a><br /><a href="http://www.bookdepository.com/book/9780356504537/?a_aid=scotspec" target="_blank">The Book Depository</a><br /><br />Or get&nbsp;<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B010PIFESY/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1634&amp;creative=19450&amp;creativeASIN=B010PIFESY&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=thespecscot-21" target="_blank">the Kindle edition</a><br /><i><br /></i><i>Recommended and Related Reading</i><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0356504565/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1634&amp;creative=19450&amp;creativeASIN=0356504565&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=thespecscot-21" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-YpviP9aRFlg/VzBh6FDB9pI/AAAAAAAAO8s/7gaCx8G4ByQZFm75kJkriHGpCYorCBgSACLcB/s200/touch-pb.jpg" width="123" /></a><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0356503585/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1634&amp;creative=19450&amp;creativeASIN=0356503585&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=thespecscot-21" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-8WlEf9mzEXc/VzBiBOi_7mI/AAAAAAAAO80/41dpqAD5hBY6NrCiN4O_av3G2oqOzQL6QCLcB/s200/fellside.jpg" width="130" /></a><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1409117693/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1634&amp;creative=19450&amp;creativeASIN=1409117693&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=thespecscot-21" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-GJIN1affD8c/VzMNobf0cLI/AAAAAAAAO9U/2kE5hDvJW1Ma8KItarm3DCvgHjXphgyxgCLcB/s200/bourneidentity.jpg" width="130" /></a></div></div>http://scotspec.blogspot.com/2016/06/book-review-sudden-appearance-of-hope.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Niall Alexander)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6498739347909985243.post-7180196788336429841Thu, 02 Jun 2016 13:00:00 +00002016-06-02T14:00:07.902+01:00book reviewdark fantasyendingshorrorJustin Croninlove storiesThe City of Mirrorsthe end of the world againThe PassagevampiresBook Review | The City of Mirrors by Justin Cronin<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-iKCb7Ih23WI/VzRjPdxxjlI/AAAAAAAAO9s/S-RDwecXlw0c18bxLOYgDghwzdp6_7otACLcB/s1600/cityofmirrors-uk.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-iKCb7Ih23WI/VzRjPdxxjlI/AAAAAAAAO9s/S-RDwecXlw0c18bxLOYgDghwzdp6_7otACLcB/s320/cityofmirrors-uk.jpg" width="209" /></a><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-HY8-OCdlSOY/VzRjPWtiqeI/AAAAAAAAO9o/me6n2jG0nS0OfD8MDpvOODhshWBirTpKwCLcB/s1600/cityofmirrors-us.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-HY8-OCdlSOY/VzRjPWtiqeI/AAAAAAAAO9o/me6n2jG0nS0OfD8MDpvOODhshWBirTpKwCLcB/s320/cityofmirrors-us.jpg" width="210" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>In life I was a scientist called Fanning...</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>...then, in a jungle in Bolivia, I died...</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>I died, and then I was brought back to life.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>Prompted by a voice that lives in her blood, the fearsome warrior known as Alicia of Blades is drawn towards to one of the great cities of The Time Before. The ruined city of New York. Ruined but not empty. For this is the final refuge of Zero, the first and last of The Twelve. The one who must be destroyed if mankind is to have a future.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>What she finds is not what she's expecting: a</i><i>&nbsp;journey into the past, t</i><i>o find out how it all began, a</i><i>nd an opponent at once deadlier and more human than she could ever have imagined.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>***</i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><br /></i></div><div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;">The epic journey that began in <i>The Passage </i>finally comes full circle in <i>The City of Mirrors</i>, a proper doorstopper of a novel that satisfies somewhat in spite of its sheer size and a hell of a hammy bad guy.<br /><br />I have such fond memories of the beginning of this trilogy, which paired an awesome and expansive apocalypse—one up there, in my estimation, with the end of the world in <i>Swan Song </i>and <i>The Stand—</i>with a truly heartbreaking tale of loss on the small scale. By the denouement of that book, I had no idea where the story as a whole was going to go, but I knew that I wanted to know. And then... well.<br /><br /><i>The Twelve </i>wasn't terrible. It had a couple of a kick-ass action scenes, and some stirring slower moments that allowed Justin Cronin to explore the emotions of his vast cast of characters. But almost every other inch of that many-inched monolith of a novel felt like filler; texture at best and time-wasting at worst. In that respect,&nbsp;<i>The City of Mirrors </i>splits the difference. It&nbsp;doesn't meander as much as its messy predecessor did, but nor, on the back of such bloat, and with more of its own to add to the tally, can it recapture the magic of <i>The Passage</i>.<br /><br />"Three years had passed since the liberation of the Homeland" (p.18) that ended <i>The Twelve</i>, and almost a hundred thousand souls now call the walled city of Kerrville, Texas home. Considering how catastrophic the survivors' situation seemed until recently, that's reason enough to be optimistic,&nbsp;never mind the fact that there hasn't been a single viral sighting since:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">The age of the viral was over; humankind was finally on the upswing. A continent stood for the taking, and Kerrville was the place where this new age would begin. So why did it seem so meager to [Peter], so frail? Why, standing on the dam of an otherwise encouraging summer morning, did he feel this inward shiver of misgiving? (p.15)</blockquote>Perhaps because Peter—the leader of the resistance that took down the Twelve viral progenitors, and in turn the millions of vampires they had sired—has lost his sense of purpose. Or perhaps because "people had begun to openly talk about moving outside the wall," (p.15) and he can't believe that the threat is actually at an end.<br /><br /><a name='more'></a>It might be that most of Kerrville's residents are itching to expand beyond the thick brick boundaries they've lived their entire lives behind, but there are others who agree with Peter; others who outright refuse to accept that the dracs are done for:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">Something was coming; [he] could feel it. He knew it the same as he knew his own heartbeat, the wind of breath in his chest, the carriage of his bones. The long arc of human history was headed toward the hour of its final test. When this hour would come there was no knowing, but come it surely would, and it would be a time for warriors. For men like Lucius Greer.&nbsp;(p.18)</blockquote>But even the likes of Lucius lose some of their certainty as time wears on without significant incident and the central figures of Cronin's trilogy get busy living. The silly so-and-sos settle down, marry off, get jobs and make a bunch of babies in what must be the most tedious section of said series—all the while, from the safety of his lair in the subway tunnels of the titular city of mirrors, an evil individual regards Kerrvile and the several settlements that spring up around its periphery with envious eyes, and slowly, and surely, draws his plans against them.<br /><br />Pardon me for paraphrasing, but the melodrama of H. G. Wells' text is wholly appropriate given the wilful wickedness of&nbsp;<i>The City of Mirrors</i>' villain. He's called Zero, as in patient zero—the first human to contract the virus that led to the Great Catastrophe—and I'm afraid Cronin's attempts to give his dark designs depth, to somehow humanise the monster that was once the man Timothy Fanning, only make him more ridiculous.<br /><br />"Indulge me—memory is my method in all things, and the story has more bearing than you think," (p.232) the author appears to plead as dives deep into Fanning's past as a well-to-do Harvard student who tragically lost the lady he loved and summarily became so frustrated with his lot in life that he decided to lay waste to the whole of the human race:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">It was absurd, all of it. What had [Amy] expected? Not this. Not this whirlwind of instantly changeable moods and thoughts. This man before her: there was something almost pathetic about him. (p.481)</blockquote>When word of his continued existence eventually reaches the remains of civilisation, Alicia—who's pretty much been chilling with this pitiful villain since the events of <i>The Twelve</i>—Alicia urges (I kid you not) President Peter to take Zero seriously, declaring that "this is different.&nbsp;<i>Fanning&nbsp;</i>is different. He's been controlling everything from the start. The only reason we were able to kill the Twelve was because he&nbsp;<i>let&nbsp;</i>us. We're all pieces on a board to him," (p.357) is how she puts it, as if <i>The City of Mirrors</i>' tendencies toward the obvious weren't obvious enough.<br /><br />I'm sorry to say that Cronin's handling of his antagonist is so very vapid that it serves to suck a lot of the life out of <i>The City of Mirrors</i>, particularly during the text's uneventful opening sections. Happily, once Zero is given leave to get on with the business of being evil, and the characters in Kerrville get a whiff of what's in the wind, everything about the book improves.<br /><br />Whether this injection of tension and terror is too little, too late will depend, in the end, on your desire to see this series through, and whilst I won't spoil what follows, rest assured that if you do, the ending—excepting an extended epilogue that makes a overlong novel even longer—is excellent, there's a seismic set-piece that puts&nbsp;<i>The Twelve</i>'s explosive showdown to shame, and you can expect something close to closure with respect to the handful of survivors who're still alive when all is said and done.<br /><br />And so the saga that started with <i>The Passage</i> ends. Not with a bang, though bangs abound, or even a whimper, though Zero supplies several, but with a feeling of relief: relief that the last act turned out quite a bit better than expected; relief, relatedly, that this is "not merely a tale of suffering and loss, arrogance and death, but also one of hope and rebirth" (p.558); but first and foremost, for me at least, relief that this story is over.<br /><br /></div></div><div><div style="text-align: center;">***</div></div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /><b>&nbsp;The City of Mirrors</b><br />by Justin Cronin<br /><br />UK Publication: June 2016, Gollancz<br />US Publication: May 2016, Ballantine<br /><br />Buy this book from<br /><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0752897896/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1634&amp;creative=19450&amp;creativeASIN=0752897896&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=thespecscot-21" target="_blank">Amazon.co.uk</a>&nbsp;/&nbsp;<a href="http://www.amazon.com/City-Mirrors-Novel-Passage-Trilogy/dp/034550500X/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1463050817&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=city+mirrors+cronin&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-20&amp;linkId=bbeb87efb791538121935a6585c4f37f" target="_blank">Amazon.com</a><br /><a href="http://www.bookdepository.com/book/9780752897912/?a_aid=scotspec" target="_blank">The Book Depository</a><br /><br />Or get&nbsp;<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B010RIJGI6/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1634&amp;creative=19450&amp;creativeASIN=B010RIJGI6&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=thespecscot-21" target="_blank">the Kindle edition</a><br /><i><br /></i><i>Recommended and Related Reading</i><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0575130717/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1634&amp;creative=19450&amp;creativeASIN=0575130717&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=thespecscot-21" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-FCI-TMAOx5k/VzRj_XZLcQI/AAAAAAAAO90/Day2NzbA1aUlgkfOA3hAnk7WdpMxqGFfgCLcB/s200/fireman-uk.jpg" width="129" /></a><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0752883305/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1634&amp;creative=19450&amp;creativeASIN=0752883305&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=thespecscot-21" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-A09A9yp3yUk/VzRkb-jPFxI/AAAAAAAAO98/qTN0be5T7M8BokWxcz712rQJcnKHNNNNgCLcB/s200/passage-pb.jpg" width="132" /></a><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0099580489/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1634&amp;creative=19450&amp;creativeASIN=0099580489&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=thespecscot-21" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-PwMQ2_h5QPg/VzRkdN6KPqI/AAAAAAAAO-A/59M2TMNjQwUli7hBfACYIuoQmq16pIDzQCLcB/s200/wool-pb.jpg" width="130" /></a></div></div>http://scotspec.blogspot.com/2016/06/book-review-city-of-mirrors-by-justin.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Niall Alexander)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6498739347909985243.post-455742785660082816Mon, 30 May 2016 13:02:00 +00002016-05-30T14:02:51.557+01:00alternate historybook reviewChildren of Earth and SkyfantasyGuy Gavriel Kayholy warpiracyThe Lions of Al-RassanThe Sarantine MosaicBook Review | Children of Earth and Sky by Guy Gavriel Kay<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-g9tBOUa1w3o/VxYPKVELhZI/AAAAAAAAO4w/ENI2A37w_5oQSBLsQyRnxbYtSNG_3zQagCLcB/s1600/Children-of-Earth-and-Sky-UK.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-g9tBOUa1w3o/VxYPKVELhZI/AAAAAAAAO4w/ENI2A37w_5oQSBLsQyRnxbYtSNG_3zQagCLcB/s320/Children-of-Earth-and-Sky-UK.jpg" width="207" /></a><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8EjJ16yPFLs/VxYPKDoH-sI/AAAAAAAAO4s/46GktdPJxmcDGNgjVkLHhQObdiMpAAl3wCLcB/s1600/Children-of-Earth-and-Sky-US.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8EjJ16yPFLs/VxYPKDoH-sI/AAAAAAAAO4s/46GktdPJxmcDGNgjVkLHhQObdiMpAAl3wCLcB/s320/Children-of-Earth-and-Sky-US.jpg" width="211" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>From the small coastal town of Senjan, notorious for its pirates, a young woman sets out to find vengeance for her lost family. That same spring, from the wealthy city-state of Seressa, famous for its canals and lagoon, come two very different people: a young artist traveling to the dangerous east to paint the grand khalif at his request—and possibly to do more—and a fiercely intelligent, angry woman, posing as a doctor’s wife, but sent by Seressa as a spy.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>The trading ship that carries them is commanded by the accomplished younger son of a merchant family, ambivalent about the life he’s been born to live. And farther east a boy trains to become a soldier in the elite infantry of the khalif—to win glory in the war everyone knows is coming.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>As these lives entwine, their fates—and those of many others—will hang in the balance, when the khalif sends out his massive army to take the great fortress that is the gateway to the western world...</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>***</i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><br /></i></div><div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>Children of Earth and Sky </i>sees contemporary fiction's finest fantasist return to the site of the Sarantine Mosaic and the subject of <i>The Lions of Al-Rassan </i>in a magnificently modest affair more interested in the myriad men and women caught in the crossfire of the holy war that flickers around its fringes than it is that momentous event.<br /><br />The most apparent casualty of the the conflict so far is the city of cities itself, for just as Constantinople&nbsp;was toppled by the Ottomans, Sarantium in all its unimaginable majesty has finally fallen to the followers of an indomitable conqueror. It's known, now, as Asharias, "and the man who ruled there amid gardens where silence was apparently the law on pain of strangulation [...] wanted to rule the world." (pp.64-65)<br /><br />You might imagine his megalomaniacal designs would inspire the several cities in the vicinity to put aside their trivial differences—after all, if Sarantium can be successfully sieged, then nowhere is safe from the Osmanli Empire's plans to expand. You'd be mistaken, I'm afraid. Sadly for the people of Seressa and Dubrava, the governing bodies of Kay's vibrant versions of Venice and Dubrovnik are entirely too dependent on trade to even consider open conflict:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">For the Seressinis, the idea of peace, with open, unthreatened commerce, was the most important thing in the god's created world. It mattered more (though this would never actually be&nbsp;<i>said</i>) than diligent attention to the doctrines of Jad as voiced by the sun god's clerics. Seressa traded, extensively, with the unbelieving Osmanlis in the east—and did so whatever High Patriarchs might say or demand. (p.5)</blockquote><a name='more'></a>Despite the annual march of the Grand Khalif's army on the nearby Woberg fortress, Seressa's Council of Twelve are markedly more active regarding their rivalry with Dubrava, which nation-state they see as "a pale, circumscribed,&nbsp;<i>permitted&nbsp;</i>shadow" next to the "light like the sun of Jad" (p.42) their own republic represents:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">Accidents had happened to Seressinis in Dubrava in the past. The smaller republic was diplomatic, cautious,&nbsp;<i>crafty</i>. It watched the winds of the world. It was also proud of its freedoms. The people of Sauradia and Trakesia, all those over that way, had a history of violence and independence going back to when many of them were pagans in the days of the Sarantine Empire, when Sarantium ruled the world. (p.64)</blockquote>But Seressa does not war with duplicitous Dubrava either. Instead, it spies. And spies. And spies, amusingly, on the spies spying on its own spies. As one such one spy sighs when confronted by another:&nbsp;"There was always someone spying. There wasn't much you could do about it. Information was the iron key to unlock the world." (p.8) And granted:&nbsp;important information is important. But only if you're prepared to translate it into action, and alas, neither Seressa nor Dubrava are.<br /><br />The pirates of Senjan, on the other hand—a community of holy warriors inspired, according to the Acknowledgements,&nbsp;by the Uskoks of ancient Croatia, and cast here as a thorn in the side of Seressa, whose ships they pillage because of their affiliation with the infidel—the Senjani aren't given to deliberating. They do, to bring glory to their god, and they die. They'll have the opportunity to do both before <i>Children of Earth and Sky </i>is over...<br /><br />This, then, is the grand sweep of Kay's latest: a contested coast populated by powers little and large on the cusp of a conflict that could change the world as dramatically, perhaps, as the sacking of Sarantium. And it's engrossing, of course. The stakes are great, the scenario resonantly rendered, and we care about the players—which is to say the many, many people we meet, however briefly, but also the settings themselves. In Senjan,&nbsp;Asharias,&nbsp;Seressa and Dubrava, Kay gives us underdogs to dig in with, bullies to boo, blustering bystanders to bemoan and scrappy upstarts to support. Dynamics are developed between the text's central perspectives, certainly, but above and beyond these, the places they hail from have a whole engrossing story of their own.<br /><br />The unfolding of that story is sure to be surmised as slow by some, but Kay has never been the sort of author to race towards a destination. The joy of his novels is invariably in the journeys—in the unexpected turns they take and the caravan of characters they gather—and <i>Children of Earth and Sky </i>is no exception in that respect. "Nothing about this [...] requires or is assisted by speed," (p.12) as a passing chancellor suggests, supping at a cup of fine warmed wine; a telling testimonial Kay revisits at a later stage:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">It is a mistake to think that drama is steady, continuous, even in tumultuous times. Most often there are lulls and lacunae in the life of a person or state. There is apparent stability, order, an illusion of calm—and then circumstances can change at speed. (p.253)</blockquote>And what an impact it has when they do! When the calm is shattered by sudden stormfronts; when the journey is interrupted by bandits or betrayal or some twist of history that's happened in the background; when the large is inflicted on the unwitting little—this, I think, is what <i>Children of Earth and Sky </i>is most interested in. Not the Earth-changing events themselves—though they happen, and Kay's cast <i>is </i>caught up in them—but the effects these events have on a handful of human beings pulled principally from "the twinned worlds of commerce and courts."&nbsp;(p.42)<br /><br />They are Marin Djivo, Leonora Valeri, Pero Villani, Danica Gradek and Damaz. They are the second son of a successful merchant, the disgraced daughter of a well-to-do family which cast her off like old clothing, an aspiring artist asked to paint an important portrait, a young woman who wants nothing more than to hurt those who hurt her, and her abducted brother.<br /><br />They are not queens or commanders or even advisers, these people, but that does not mean they are unremarkable. They are not causal in the changing of the world, but the changing of the world causes their worlds to change—and their worlds are not without worth; they have magic and meaning, heartache and horror, hope and beauty and truth, too. As the Seressini ambassador has it: "Not everyone could be a master. You could shape an honourable life somewhere below that level of accomplishment. It felt like an important thought." (p.16)<br /><br />And it is, in the hands of contemporary fiction's finest fantasist. A book of the year to be about ordinary people not so different from you and me,&nbsp;<i>Children of Earth and Sky&nbsp;</i>is every inch the equal&nbsp;of the superlative Sarantine Mosiac, "even if no one worked with stone and glass anymore." (p.347)<br /><br /></div></div><div><div style="text-align: center;">***</div></div></div><i></i><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><br /><b>Children of Earth and Sky</b><br />by Guy Gavriel Kay<br /><br />UK Publication: May 2016, Hodder<br />US Publication: May 2016, New American Library<br /><br />Buy this book from<br /><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1473628105/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1634&amp;creative=19450&amp;creativeASIN=1473628105&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=thespecscot-21" target="_blank">Amazon.co.uk</a>&nbsp;/&nbsp;<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Children-Earth-Sky-Guy-Gavriel/dp/0451472969/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1461063492&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=children+earth+sky+kay&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=thespecscot-20&amp;linkId=42bc9d3b91d3b791b6d05595153cbb6e" target="_blank">Amazon.com</a><br /><a href="http://www.bookdepository.com/book/9781501135392/?a_aid=scotspec" target="_blank">The Book Depository</a><br /><br />Or get&nbsp;<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0117867EQ/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1634&amp;creative=19450&amp;creativeASIN=B0117867EQ&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=thespecscot-21" target="_blank">the Kindle edition</a><br /><i><br /></i><i>Recommended and Related Reading</i><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/000734208X/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1634&amp;creative=19450&amp;creativeASIN=000734208X&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=thespecscot-21" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-pSVLm8DI94Q/VxYQ7FjitDI/AAAAAAAAO5A/--yV_S_U0gsXpm9a3gWglQ7iaUb9wpNmACLcB/s200/sailingtosarantium.jpg" width="130" /></a><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0553820125/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1634&amp;creative=19450&amp;creativeASIN=0553820125&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=thespecscot-21" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-htc0Bsue9e0/VxYQ8lxOPfI/AAAAAAAAO5E/U1zc_7ddBCA_pwKA82bLrKBKDoZyFGk8wCLcB/s200/forgeofdarkness-uk.jpg" width="130" /></a><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1906735700/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1634&amp;creative=19450&amp;creativeASIN=1906735700&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=thespecscot-21" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-SN4wfTbnsJM/VxYQ5xHsI6I/AAAAAAAAO48/jI6mgPatj-kgnVJXRWhSWSy2JRS0PtRiQCLcB/s200/monarchies1-hawkwoodandthekings.jpg" width="122" /></a></div></div>http://scotspec.blogspot.com/2016/05/book-review-children-of-earth-and-sky.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Niall Alexander)0